«^>mL^^SM^^«^^W?      s    J^.'     ^N^ 


BL  263  .B35  1897 
Bascom,  John,  1827-1911 
Evolution  and  religion 


C^  -/  v-^  .-^ 


V 


WORKS  BY  PROF.  JOHN  BASCOM. 


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EVOLUTION  AND  RELI^^^fcst)»v^ 

OR  FAITH  AS  A  PART  OF  A  COMPLETE 
COSMIC  SYSTEM 


BY/ 
JOHN'^ASCOM 

Author  of  "Philosophy  of  Religion,"  "  Natural  Theology,"  "Words 
of  Christ,"  "  The  New  Theology  " 


* 


G.P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW    YORK  LONDON 

27  WHST  TWENTY-THIRD  STREET  24  BEDFORD  STREET,  STRAND 

Su^e  |ittitk«botk£r  ^rcss 
1897 


Copyright,  1897 

BY 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


•Cbc  "Rnickerboclser  press,  "ftew  Kork 


PREFACE. 

THE  doctrine  of  evolution  is  so  recent  a 
conception,  especially  in  its  bearing  on 
spiritual  things,  that  we  are  able  as  yet 
neither  to  define  it  well  within  itself,  nor  to 
see  its  implications  when  taken  in  connection 
with  our  hiorher  life.  We  do  two  most  un- 
desirable  thines :  we  make  the  notion  so  in- 
flexible  as  to  strangle  our  intellectual  powers, 
and  we  struggle  with  the  theory  itself  as  some- 
thing which  we  would  gladly  escape.  We  hope 
to  bring  some  relief  at  both  of  these  points  ; 
to  show  that  evolution  Is  not  a  conception  in 
extinction  of  reason,  nor  yet  a  movement  in 
overthrow  of  faith.  Our  spiritual  life  Is  In- 
volved in  It  and  built  up  by  it  as  Its  most  com- 
prehensive and  consummate  product.  We 
In  no  way  grasp  our  religious  beliefs  so  firmly 
as  when  we  see  that  they  are  woven  into  the 
entire  web  of  events. 


CONTENTS. 

PART    FIRST. 

PAGE 

Evolution  as  a  Conception     .         .         .         .         i 

PART  SECOND. 

Evolution  as  Giving  Unity  to  the  Field  of 

Knowledge  and  Action      ....       25 

PART  THIRD. 
Evolution  in  its  Present  Spiritual  Phases  .        79 

PART  FOURTH. 

Evolution     in     the     Proofs     it     Offers    to 

Spiritual  Beliefs i79 


PART  I. 

EVOLUTION    AS    A    CONCEPTION. 


But  still,  despite  the  pretty  perfection 

To  which  you  carry  your  trick  of  exclusiveness, 
And,  taking  God's  word  under  wise  protection, 

Correct  its  tendency  to  diffusiveness, 
And  bid  one  reach  it  over  hot  ploughshares, — 

Still,  as  I  say,  though  you  've  found  salvation, 
If  I  should  choose  to  cry,  as  now,  "  Shares!  " — 

See  if  the  best  of  you  bars  me  my  ration  ! 
I  prefer,  if  you  please,  for  my  expounder 

Of  the  laws  of  the  feast,  the  feast's  own  Founder  ; 
Mine 's  the  same  right  with  your  poorest  and  sickliest, 

Supposing  I  don  the  marriage-vestment : 
So,  shut  your  mouth  and  open  your  Testament, 

And  carve  me  my  portion  at  your  quickliest ! 

Robert  Browning,  Christmas-eve  and  Easter -day. 


PART  I. 

EVOLUTION    AS    A    CONCEPTION. 

NO  one  idea,  in  our  generation,  has  ac- 
cepted more  change  within  itself,  or 
been  more  productive  of  change  in  our 
conception  of  the  world,  taken  collectively, 
than  that  of  evolution.  We  especially  need, 
therefore,  to  understand  the  notion  in  its  own 
spiritual  force,  and  in  the  modifications  it  has 
brought,  and  will  still  bring,  to  our  religious 
convictions. 

Evolution  means  different  things  to  differ- 
ent persons.  While  it  has  for  all  some  com- 
mon characteristics,  it  is  not  coherently  held 
by  all  as  an  idea  whose  terms  are  fully  recon- 
ciled within  themselves,  and  harmonized  with 
the  events  of  the  world.  It  has  something  of 
that  crudeness  which  attaches  to  notions  that 
are  gathering  way  in  the  public  mind,  but  have 
not  yet  been  mastered  by  it.  The  conception 
which  it  displaces  is  that  of  a  physical  world 


Evolution  and  Reliction. 


^^ 


possessed  of  its  own  ultimate  qualities,  and 
subject,  like  material  in  the  hands  of  a  builder, 
to  constructive  processes  foreign  to  it.  The 
most  developed  form  of  this  comparatively 
mechanical  idea  of  the  world  has  been  a  phase 
of  Theism — Personal  Power  at  work  in  phys- 
ical things  ;  the  two  very  separable  from  each 
other,  and  more  or  less  repellent  in  their  rela- 
tions. 

Evolution  greatly  alters  this  theory  of  the 
world.  Under  it  the  world  is  not  so  much  a 
construction  as  a  growth.  The  changes  in- 
volved in  its  creation  have  been  a  continuous 
series, — gaining  expression  in  material  things, 
— each  preparing  the  way  for  the  next,  and 
passing  Into  it.  This  general  movement  Is 
resolvable  into  minute  transformations,  per- 
fectly coherent  under  uniform  methods.  Thus 
far  there  is  general  agreement  In  the  concep- 
tion of  evolution  ;  but  in  its  later  unfolding, 
and  in  the  relation  which  It  is  thought  to  sus- 
tain to  previous  interpreting  ideas,  there  springs 
up  diversity. 

Evolution,  as  involving  a  close-knit  series  of 
slight  changes,  is  one  thing ;  evolution,  In  the 
theories  It  calls  out  of  the  ultimate  nature  of 
cosmic  phenomena,  and  of  the  origin  of  the 


Evolution  as  a  Conception.  3 

energies  expressed  in  the  movement  of  events, 
is  another  thing.  Evolution,  as  a  fact  simply, 
gives  a  perfectly  open,  and  an  absolutely  com- 
plete, field  to  empirical  inquiry.  The  last  sub- 
division of  events,  and  their  exact  order  of 
sequence,  become  subjects  of  unending  inves- 
tigation, and  furnish  us  everywhere  with  the 
material  of  science.  In  no  direction  Is  this 
search  unfruitful ;  in  none  do  we  put  upon  it 
any  final  limits. 

What  the  rational  implications  of  these  evo- 
lutionary facts  are,  it  is  the  office  of  philosophy 
to  consider.  The  facts  themselves  remain  the 
same  under  one  theory  or  another  of  their  ulti- 
mate significance.  With  these  facts  science 
may  exclusively  busy  itself,  raising  no  ques- 
tions as  to  the  rational  suggestions,  which,  as 
a  complete  series,  they  may  contain.  There 
has  been,  however,  a  form  of  science  which 
has  added  to  itself  a  philosophical  attitude, 
simply  that  it  might  deny  the  reality  of  any 
knowledge  which  lies  beyond  the  phenomena 
themselves.  The  implications  of  the  sensuous 
facts,  one  and  all,  seem  to  it  vague  and  illu- 
sory. The  mind  is  led  to  distrust  one  of  its 
most  universal  explanatory  tendencies.  We 
believe  that  the  best  correction  of  this  doubt 


Evolution  and  Religfion. 


& 


Is  to  be  found  in  a  better  understanding  of 
evolution  itself. 

The  sensuous  features  and  the  exact  order 
of  physical  facts  are  to  be  studied,  whether  we 
do  or  do  not  believe  that  the  agents  to  which 
we  have  been  wont  to  refer  them  are  intelli- 
gible realities.  The  phenomenal  form  of 
organic  facts  Is  equally  to  be  sought  out, 
whether  we  accept  or  refuse  to  accept  life  as 
a  plastic  power.  It  Is  the  office  of  science  to 
give  fully  and  accurately  the  sensuous  facts 
and  sequences  of  the  world  ;  it  is  the  office  of 
philosophy  to  render  the  rational  ideas  which 
are  contained  in  these  phenomena ;  and  of  re- 
ligion, to  disclose  the  spiritual  affections  and 
actions  which  are  incident  to  Insight.  Science 
presents  the  facts  of  the  world  ;  philosophy 
interprets  them  in  terms  of  reason  ;  and  re- 
ligion, in  terms  of  spiritual  life.  Each,  In  Its 
relation  to  the  other,  is  profoundly  modified 
by  the  doctrine  of  evolution  ;  and  the  truths 
of  each  are  most  clearly  seen  and  enforced  In 
connection  with  this  conception. 

Science  turns  from  speculations  that  have 
often  been  hasty,  vague,  without  authority,  to 
a  patient  Investigation  of  phenomena,  the  data 
of  thought  held  firmly  in  our  sensuous  lives. 


Evolution  as  a  Conception.  5 

Its  facts  thus  become  fruitful  in  action  and  a 
common  field  of  knowledge.  This  stability, 
coherence,  and  possible  extension  of  inquiry 
have  called  out  an  enthusiasm  in  its  behalf 
before  unknown. 

Knowledge,  by  virtue  of  the  doctrine  of 
evolution,  gains  certainty,  universality,  soli- 
darity. Amid  all  the  diversity  of  appearances, 
permanent  constituents  and  fixed  methods  of 
succession  are  everywhere  present.  The  web 
is  one  through  the  entire  complexity  of  its 
pattern.  We  are  dealing,  all  of  us  in  all  places 
and  times,  with  phenomena  which  interpret 
each  other,  and  are  coherent  with  each  other 
in  one  world.  Our  knowledge  remains  no 
variable  product  of  diverse  opinions  and  di- 
vided data,  but  becomes  matter  of  common 
observation  and  wise  rendering.  This  is  ulti- 
mately equally  true  of  the  conclusions  of 
science,  the  results  of  philosophy,  and  the  con- 
victions of  reliofion.  The  difference  between 
them  lies  in  the  slowness  with  which  the  tissue 
of  thought  spreads  in  succession  through  them. 
The  mind  thus  eains  release  from  the  endless 
tossings  of  speculation,  and,  like  one  who 
lands  with  his  goods  on  a  new  continent,  is 
prepared  to   take  possession  of   the  field  be- 


6  Evolution  and  Religion. 

fore  It,  and  gather  about  it  its  permanent  re- 
sources. This  sense  of  certainty,  arising  from 
the  abiding  facts  of  the  physical  world,  plants 
our  feet  on  dry  land  after  every  distressful 
and  weary  voyage. 

Evolution  also  gives  a  universality  to  knowl- 
edge quite  beyond  our  previous  experience, — 
a  universality  in  time,  in  place,  and  in  fulness. 
The  stimulating  power  of  evolution  is  due  to 
the  feeling  it  imparts  of  an  ever-enlarging 
horizon.  One  is  placed  by  it  in  the  midst  of 
all  knowledge.  All  knowledge  rises  before 
him  in  full  tide,  and  spreads  itself  like  an 
ocean  through  all  spaces.  The  hesitancy  and 
stagnation  of  thought  at  any  one  moment  are 
overcome  by  the  volume  of  energy  which 
everywhere  envelops  it.  The  atmosphere  is 
kept  pure  and  stimulating  by  its  own  dimen- 
sions. 

The  mind  may  select  its  directions  of  In- 
quiry, and  push  Its  way  backward  and  forward 
in  the  movement  of  events  till  the  past  history 
and  future  promise  of  the  world  assume  with 
It  the  force  of  a  sensible  experience.  Eternity 
ceases  to  be  an  empty  word,  and  Is  filled  with 
phenomena  traceable  In  exhaustless  sequence. 
Infinity,  no  longer  a  mere  sound,  becomes  a 


Evolution  as  a  Conception.  7 

limitless  field  over  which  the  historic  scroll  is 
displayed.  Nor  are  present  sensuous  facts 
less  stimulating.  Some  slight  clew  of  knowl- 
edge may  be  sufficient  to  put  us  in  possession 
of  a  system  of  laws  everywhere  prevalent. 
The  waves  that  fall  vocal  at  our  feet  are  dying 
away  In  murmurs  that  run  along  all  shores. 

While  there  are  primary  lines  of  power, 
these  are  so  interwoven  with  one  another  as  to 
make  the  web  equally  tenacious  in  whatever 
direction  we  test  It.  Thus  if  we  have  many 
successive  forms  of  vegetable  and  animal  life, 
we  have  also  a  single  and  a  collective  response 
of  them  all  to  their  environment, — a  response 
which  renders  these  lives  in  their  diversity  co- 
ordinate with  each  other  and  with  their  physi- 
cal conditions.  These  conditions,  in  turn,  are 
extensively  modified  by  these  lives.  So  also 
the  connections  of  thought,  like  nerves  in  the 
human  body,  penetrate  the  entire  product,  and 
leave  nothing  out  of  that  great  result,  a  com- 
prehensible world.  Equally  are  the  highest 
affections  fed  by  these  tenuous  fibres  of  knowl- 
edge,— roots  in  a  physical  soil — and  become, 
by  means  of  them,  noble  and  well-nourished 
forms  of  life. 

A  kindred   Implication  of  evolution  Is  the 


8  Evolution  and  Religion. 

solidarity  of  knowledge.  Knowledge  cannot 
be  otherwise  than  interdependent  in  all  its 
parts.  The  universe  is  wrought  constructively 
together,  and  so  must  be  our  comprehension 
of  it.  The  mind  in  its  inquiries  moves  neces- 
sarily along  the  building  lines  that  have  been 
laid  down  in  the  growth  of  the  world.  There 
is  no  living  thing  and  no  living  experience 
which  is  not  genetically  associated  with  every 
other  living  thing  and  living  experience.  As 
every  bud  in  a  tree  may  be  reached  from  every 
other  bud  along  a  path  of  vital  tissue,  so  there 
is  no  department  of  thought  which  may  not 
be  entered  from  other  departments,  and  does 
not,  in  turn,  open  new  ways  of  access  to  them. 
The  mind  is  as  much  the  correlative  term  of 
the  universe,  and  the  universe  of  the  mind,  as 
the  reflections  in  a  lake  and  the  banks  and  sky 
about  it  and  above  it  are  counterparts  of  each 
other. 

The  slowly  unfolding  connections  of  society 
call  out,  enlarge,  and  instruct  the  ethical  in- 
sight. An  ever-growing  tissue  of  moral  rela- 
tions transforms  the  world  for  us,  leads  us  to  a 
more  spiritual  rendering  of  it,  makes  us  ever 
more  assured  of  a  divine  element  in  it,  and 
guides  us  to  a  better  apprehension  of  that  ele- 


Evolution  as  a  Conception.  9 

ment.  Thus  our  belief  In  God,  the  Implications 
of  that  belief,  and  our  experience  of  life,  become 
one  and  the  same  vitalized  product.  Belief  Is 
as  much  an  achievement  as  an  investigation, 
the  fastening  of  tendrils  as  the  spreading  of 
leaves,  an  environment  as  a  living  response  to 
it.  Belief  is  reaching  the  Inner  force  of  things 
and  events  empirically  as  wellas  weaving  them 
together  speculatively.  The  very  word  com- 
prehension carries  with  It  a  double  meaning, — 
a  taking-hold  of  things,  and  an  understanding 
of  them.  The  two  processes  are  Inseparable. 
We  enter  on  the  world  as  a  living  experience. 
We  proceed  to  put  It  together  as  a  rational 
construction.  Our  wisdom  Is  a  higher  con- 
sciousness which  dawns  on  our  lower  sensuous 
action,  and  fills  it  with  light.  In  this  perpetual 
expansion  of  intelligence,  the  regnant  idea  is 
evolution, — a  coherent  movement  universally 
present. 

But  while  evolution  will,  with  all  minds, 
have  this  wide  constructive  force,  it  easily  as- 
sumes two  different  forms,  giving  very  diverse 
extension  to  spiritual  beliefs.  The  notion  is 
itself  subject  to  that  Inescapable  question  of 
inner  character  with  which  we  have  pushed  the 
world  in  all  its  parts,  reaching  a  wide  diversity 


lo  Evolution  and  Relio-jon. 


^ 


of  conclusions.  We  may  have  a  mechanical 
evolution  or  a  spiritual  evolution,  and  the  one 
or  the  other  leaves  the  world  in  very  different 
degrees  a  dead  or  a  living  thing.  By  a  me- 
chanical evolution  we  mean  one  in  which  the 
quality  and  quantity  of  all  the  agents  involved 
are  perfectly  definite.  The  included  causes 
are,  at  any  moment  in  which  we  take  up  the 
process,  complete.  Each  successive  stage  in  the 
movement  follows  in  due  order,  and  the  last  is 
as  perfectly  embraced  in  the  primary  conditions 
as  the  first.  This  conception  of  evolution  is 
unacceptable,  because  it  assumes  an  extreme 
statement  by  no  means  involved  In  the  facts  to 
be  explained  ;  because  we  can  In  no  way  sug- 
gest the  method  of  the  successive  transitions, 
nor  render  them  to  ourselves  In  terms  of  expe- 
rience ;  and  because  it  makes  no  provision, 
certainly  no  adequate  provision,  for  the  larger 
half,  the  spiritual  half,  of  the  world.  It  ren- 
ders evolution  In  a  way  In  which  It  does  not 
embrace  the  entire  product,  but  fearfully 
mutilates  It. 

By  a  spiritual  evolution  we  understand  one 
of  distinct  increments  and  of  an  over-rullne 
purpose,  which  in  Its  entire  process  contains 
and  expresses  personal,  spiritual  power  In  the 


Evolution  as  a  Conception.         ii 

means  employed,  in  their  combination,  and  in 
their  outcome.  The  evolution  of  the  world  is 
thus  allied  to  that  of  a  lanofuao^e  or  of  an  art. 
The  physical  forces  are,  In  every  stage  of  their 
development,  permeated  and  borne  forward  by 
intellectual  ones.  The  two  terms,  physical  and 
spiritical,  proceed  inseparable  from  each  other. 
We  accept  this  form  of  evolution  because  It 
recognizes.  In  their  full  extent  and  at  their 
true  value,  the  spiritual  elements  we  find  In 
the  world,  and  which  In  so  large  a  degree 
make  up  the  medium  In  which  we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being, — the  spiritual  ele- 
ments which  alone  stimulate  us  to  the  very  In- 
quiry Into  the  world  which  we  have  In  hand  ; 
because  empirically  the  world  offers  to  us.  In 
living  things  and  In  their  Innumerable  phases, 
what  seem  to  be  Increments  ;  because  many  of 
the  modifications  of  life,  like  those  which  se- 
cure cross-fertilization  In  plants,  are  extensive 
and  complicated,  and  cannot  be  divided  into 
minute  serial  changes,  but  must  be  accepted 
as  one  whole  ;  because  what  we  term  ''  sports  " 
exhibit  definite  and  extended  modifications, 
taking  place  at  once ;  because  the  world,  taken 
collectively  as  an  orderly  and  growing  crea- 
tion, calls  for  an  explanation  in  clearness  and 


12  Evolution  and  Religion. 

force  proportioned  to  the  comprehensiveness 
and  mao-nitude  of  this  final  result ;  and  because 
the    make-shifts    of    a   mechanical   theory,    by 
which  intellectual  elements  are  pushed  aside 
or  minimized,  are,  one  and  all,  narrow  In  tem- 
per,   and    inconsistent    with    evolution    itself. 
The    problem   offered   us   in   the  world  is  at 
once  one  of  single  parts  and  of  collective  re- 
sults.    The  two  must  glide  into  each   other, 
and  find  interpretation  together, — evolution  as 
a  series  of  changes,   evolution   as   concurrent 
changes  in  one  progressive  whole.      No  theory 
is  adequate  which  does  not  cover  them  both. 
Of  the  two  parts  of  the  problem,  the  one  which 
makes  the  strongest  appeal  to  the  mind,  and 
demands  most  distinctly  a  rational  rendering, 
is  that  of  the  general  order  of  the  world.     We 
cannot  treat  this  great  fact  neghgently,  and 
atone  for   our  failure   by  the   careful   way  in 
which  we    have    covered    subordinate    points. 
The  issue  of  our  work  must  be  in  comprehen- 
siveness equal  to  the  magnitude  of  the  phe- 
nomena themselves.      We  may  readily  accept 
the    view    that    the   organic  thing  is   in   such 
immediate   response  to  its  surroundings   that 
each  change  in  it  is  the  result  of  these  joint 
conditions, — an   action  and  reaction   of   outer 


Evolution  as  a  Conception.  13 

and   inner  terms.      It   is   on   this  supposition 
alone  that  the  evolution  of  life  becomes  a  sub- 
ject of  continuous  and  searching  inquiry  ;  but 
this  is  not  equivalent  to  finding  in  these  ruling 
circumstances  absolute   and   sufficient   causes, 
precisely  of  the  same  nature  as  the  physical 
causes    that    have    preceded    them.      The    re- 
sponse of  life  to  its  conditions,  and  the  trans- 
mission  of  the    organic   changes   so   induced, 
remain  peculiar  and  inscrutable  kinds  of  causa- 
tion, and  call,  in  the  new  forms  they  take  on 
and  in  the  new  directions  they  assume,  for  an 
informing  and  overruling  idea.     The  process 
is  so  disclosed  to  us,  is  so  the  product  of  cor- 
relative relations,  that  we  may  pursue  it  in  all 
its  manifold  changes  ;  but  it   never  loses  the 
character  of  a  definitely  superior,  constructive 
movement.      It  is  never  simply  a  blind  flow  of 
physical   forces.      The   physical   and   spiritual 
evolution  of  the  world  run  parallel  with  each 
other,  with  common  terms  and  constant  inter- 
action, but  are  not  identical.     They  have  each 
distinct  lessons.      The  two  together  make  the 
world  quite  as  much  an  intellectual  as  a  phys- 
ical product. 

Our  thoughts,   in  their  own  unfolding, — in 
that  evolution  which  is  indigenous  in  them — 


14  Evolution  and  Religion. 

have  led  us  universally  to  a  recognition  of 
three  supersensuous  terms  on  which  our  ex- 
planatory processes  rest, — force,  life,  reason. 
Our  final  explanation  must  embrace  all  three. 
We  cannot  so  bundle  together  simple  forces 
as  to  make  them  the  equivalent  of  life, — life, 
a  plastic  ruling  power.  Nor  can  we  so  ex- 
tend the  organic,  the  instinctive,  and  uncon- 
scious processes  of  life  as  by  them  to  displace 
the  activity  of  the  reason.  Evolution  has  Issued 
in  all  of  them.  It  Is  Impossible  that  that  con- 
scious phase  of  being  whose  product  science 
is  should  call  out  this  very  conception  of  evo- 
lution, and  at  the  same  time  affirm  reason  to 
be  of  no  slenlficance  in  connection  with  it. 
Much  rather  does  the  very  substance  of  that 
idea  appear  In  this  its  ripest  fruit. 

The  mechanical  theory  relies,  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  life,  on  the  tendency  to  organic  changes 
involved  in  shifting,  physical  conditions  and 
on  natural  selection,  as  the  two  productive 
terms  by  which  the  vegetable  and  animal 
kingdoms  are  built  up,  and  built  together,  in 
the  world.  These  causes  are  Inadequate  to 
the  work  assigned  them.  We  plainly  see  that 
physical  changes  often  favor  and  often  disturb 
the  forms  of  life  associated  with  them  ;  we  do 


Evolution  as  a  Conception.         15 

not  see  that  these  changes  have  any  power  to^ 
beget  new  varieties.  We  cannot  trace  any 
causation  at  this  point,  nor  can  we  inductively 
establish  any  law.  Varieties  remain  to  us 
obscure  products  whose  antecedents  we  only 
partially  know, — antecedents  which  bear  the 
appearance  quite  as  much  of  occasions  as  of 
causes.  We  are  in  no  way  prepared  to  affirm 
that  physical  circumstances  beget  forms  of  life 
suited  to  themselves,  nor  even  that  the  several 
forms  of  life  have,  as  a  part  of  their  primitive 
endowment,  the  power  to  reshape  themselves 
to  new  conditions.  If  we  should  accept  this 
last  assertion,  we  should  be  simply  allowing 
another  form  of  plastic  power  to  add  itself 
to  those  we  already  recognize  as  contained  in 
the  mystery  of  life,  and  are  unable  to  include 
in  the  physical  world. 

If  we  fall  back  on  the  assertion  that  chang- 
ing circumstances  must,  in  living  things  as 
elsewhere,  occasion  new  results,  even  if  not 
results  of  a  definite  order,  we  are  flung  out 
into  a  boundless  sea  of  chances,  and  can  make 
no  sure  port.  It  is  impossible,  under  simply 
accidental  variation,  to  build  up,  by  the  aid 
of  natural  selection,  the  present  order  and 
beauty  of  the  world.     The  chances  are  illim- 


1 6  Evolution  and  Religion. 

itable.  The  varieties  induced  would  be  too 
many,  too  slight,  too  changeable,  to  give  any 
sufficient  hold  to  natural  selection.  Natural 
selection  is  a  constructive  force  that  must  have 
somewhat  limited  terms — terms  of  distinct 
magnitude,  and  that  remain  with  it  for  a  con- 
siderable period — if  its  results  are  to  become 
evident.  It  is  not  a  quick,  heroic  energy,  but 
a  slow,  hesitating  process.  An  endless  flow 
of  chances  utterly  disarms  natural  selection. 

If  we  look  directly  at  natural  selection,  all 
we  can  ascribe  to  it  is  the  survival  of  that 
which  is  fit,  not  the  fitness  itself.  The  sur- 
vival of  that  which  is  able  to  survive  is  no 
mystery  :  the  mystery  lies  in  the  presence  of 
life  under  such  circumstances  as  to  declare  its 
power.  There  is  no  law  in  purely  accidental 
variations  under  which  fittinor  material  for  an 
organic  kingdom  would  be  furnished  in  suf- 
ficient quantity,  or  under  which  the  frag- 
ments that  might  appear  would  be  given  any 
vantage-ground.  There  is  no  imperative  in 
natural  selection  that  anything  shall  survive, 
or  that  any  orderly  result  shall  be  reached. 
The  anticipatory  work  must  be  done  before 
natural  selection  sets  In  ;  and  for  the  anticipa- 
tion we  have  provided  nothing  but  chance. 


Evolution  as  a  Conception.         17 

We  do  not  care  to  push  this  line  of  thought 
further.  The  ground  Is  famihar.  Our  pur- 
pose Is  simply  to  define  that  form  of  evolu- 
tion to  which  we  give  assent.  Each  man,  In 
the  end,  will  choose  between  mechanical  and 
spiritual  evolution,  according  to  his  estimate 
respectively  of  physical  and  Intellectual  phe- 
nomena. As  we  are  to  be  occupied.  In  our 
whole  discussion,  with  rational  relations,  we 
cannot  at  the  very  outset  overlook  their  dis- 
tinctive characteristics,  nor  proceed  to  put  our 
thoughts  together  under  connections  which  are 
not  themselves  Intellectual.  A  rational  move- 
ment must  be  true  to  itself  in  resting  on 
reasons  and  the  coherent  links  of  the  under- 
standing. We  cannot  allow  reason  to  betray 
or  cripple  itself  at  the  very  beginning  of  Its 
own  explorations.  In  order  that  It  may  do 
Its  work,  it  must  affirm  its  own  powers  as  ulti- 
mate judge  of  all  things. 

The  evolution,  then,  which  will  be  involved 
in  the  present  discussion,  is  that  of  a  perfectly 
coherent  unfoldlnof  of  events  under  causes  and 
reasons — causes  which  have  no  Interest  with- 
out reasons,  and  reasons  which  have  no  potency 
without  causes — working  together  for  a  defi- 
nite   end,    and   accepting  the  transitions  and 


i8  Evolution  and  Religion. 

Increments  involved  In  it.  The  web  Is  firmly 
woven  In  every  part  under  one  pattern,  but 
does  not  necessarily  start  with  every  thread 
or  every  color  that  may  appear  later.  The 
colors  rise  as  the  deslo^n  calls  for  them. 

Force,  life,  reasons  are  the  presuppositions, 
which  attend  on  all  our  explanations  of  events. 
The  thouofhts  of  men  can  make  nothinor  of 
the  world  without  them.  These  we  fully  accept. 
The  universal  mind,  subject  to  this  same  univer- 
sal evolution,  has  universally  reached  these 
notions,  which  are  the  conditions  of  Intelligent 
apprehension.  Physical  facts  fall  Into  order 
under  the  Idea  of  force,  organic  facts  under  that 
of  life,  and  Intellectual  ones  under  that  of  reason. 
They  all  rest  with  all  on  the  same  basis  as  es- 
sential parts  of  knowledge.  Evolution  affirms 
them  all. 

The  primary  and  most  simple  of  them,  that 
of  force,  has  not  escaped  as  a  supersensuous 
notion  denial,  yet  the  most  fundamental  law 
of  physics  is  the  equivalence  of  forces.  The 
equality  asserted  does  not  He  between  phenom- 
ena,— as  the  raising  of  one  pound  one  foot, 
the  burning  of  a  certain  amount  of  coal,  the 
putting-forth  of  a  given  muscular  effort — but 
between  the  forces  which    their  several   pro- 


Evolution  as  a  Conception.  19 

cesses  are  thought  to  involve.  All  our  mathe- 
matical estimates  take  hold  by  virtue  of  the 
supposition  that  phenomena,  variable  in  every 
feature  they  offer  to  the  senses,  are  none  the 
less  the  expression  of  an  indestructible  term, 
force.  It  is  not  our  purpose  to  try  to  go  back 
of  this  philosophy,  which  lies  embedded  in  all 
our  experience  as  an  evolutionary  product,  but 
under  it  to  trace  some  of  the  later  phases  of 
intellectual  life  which  are  incident  to  it.  We 
assume  the  rational  facts  of  the  world  as  our 
own  consciousness,  as  language  and  human 
history,  offer  them  to  us,  and  confine  our 
attention  to  the  liofht  which  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  casts  upon  them. 


PART  11. 

EVOLUTION  AS    GIVING    UNITY    TO    THE    FIELD  OF 
KNOWLEDGE    AND    ACTION. 


21 


That  men  with  knowledge  merely  play'd 
I  told  thee — hardly  higher  made, 
Tho'  scaling  slow  from  grade  to  grade  ; 

Much  less  this  dreamer,  deaf  and  blind, 
Named  man,  may  hope  some  truth  to  find, 
That  bears  relation  to  the  mind. 

For  every  worm  beneath  the  moon 
Draws  different  threads,  and  late  and  soon 
Spins,  toiling  out  his  own  cocoon. 


I  know  that  age  to  age  succeeds, 
Blowing  a  noise  of  tongues  and  deeds, 
A  dust  of  systems  and  of  creeds. 

I  cannot  hide  that  some  have  striven, 
Achieving  calm,  to  whom  was  given 
The  joy  that  mixes  man  with  Heaven  : 

Who,  rowing  hard  against  the  stream, 
Saw  distant  gates  of  Eden  gleam, 
And  did  not  dream  it  was  a  dream  ; 

But  heard,  by  secret  transport  led, 
Ev'n  in  the  charnels  of  the  dead, 
The  murmur  of  the  fountain-head — 

Which  did  accomplish  their  desire. 
Bore  and  forbore,  and  did  not  tire. 
Like  Stephen,  an  unquenched  fire. 

Alfred  Tennyson,  The  Two  Voices. 


23 


PART    II. 

EVOLUTION    AS    GIVING    UNITY    TO    THE  FIELD  OF 
KNOWLEDGE    AND    ACTION. 

WHAT  we  have  already  said  in  defining 
evolution  has  been  suggestive  of  our 
present  subject,  the  unity  of  knowl- 
edge and  action  ;  but  the  theme  is  so  important 
as  to  call  for  distinct  presentation. 

A  conception  of  the  physical  world,  rapidly 
gaining  clearness  with  advancing  years,  is  that 
of  a  system  of  laws  which  completely  cover  its 
phenomena,  and  perfectly  sustain  one  another. 
A  network  of  law,  with  no  flaw  in  its  meshes, 
embraces  the  entire  material  world.  A  con- 
ception akin  to  this,  slowly  arising  with  it,  but 
not  yet  generally  accepted,  is  that  of  the  unity 
of  all  fields  of  thought,  all  forms  of  truth.  This 
unity  is  not  like  that  of  a  great  body  of  water 
whose  tidal  movements  are  one  and  the  same 
everywhere,  but  like  that  of  different  seas, 
closely  united,  yet  each  subject  to  conditions 
somewhat  its  own. 

25 


26  Evolution  and  Relieion. 


fe' 


A  deep  division  between  the  several  por- 
tions of  knowledge,  rendering  them  relatively 
independent  of  each  other,  has  been  accepted 
on  various  grounds  and  from  various  motives. 
The  feelings  which  have  prompted  this  opinion 
have  sometimes  been  the  satisfaction  which 
men  find  in  some  one  form  of  truth,  and  which 
leads  them  to  contrast  their  convictions  in  this 
familiar  field  with  assertions  made  in  other 
departments,  with  a  ready  disparagement  of 
things  relatively  unknown.  This  impression 
has  gained  ground,  till  knowledge  has  been 
thought  by  some — as  by  a  few  scientists — not 
to  extend  much  beyond  their  own  favorite  sub- 
jects of  inquiry.  They  have  not  seen  that  these 
fragments  of  truth  are  incapable  of  support 
except  as  they  hold  together  in  much  wider 
relations.  At  other  times  the  feeling  has  arisen 
from  a  wish  to  protect  certain  cherished  con- 
victions from  inroads — like  those  of  a  barbar- 
ous horde — coming  from  remote  and  unfamiliar 
quarters.  The  defenders  of  a  given  form  of 
faith  have  hoped  to  build  a  wall  about  it  not  to 
be  scaled  by  any  enemy. 

The  error  is  the  same,  whether  we  shut  in  a 
region  of  inquiry  as  sufficient  unto  itself,  or  shut 
one  out  as  barren  and  unprofitable.     We  should 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       27 

rather,  in  our  explorations,  having  the  whole 
world  before  us,  be  most  pressed,  like  the  Arctic 
adventurers,  in  our  thought  by  the  things  least 
known.  Religion  cannot  reject  the  criticisms 
of  science  as  not  pertinent  to  its  high  subject- 
matter,  nor  can  science  confidently  pursue  its 
own  inquiries  with  a  scorn  of  all  conclusions 
not  reached  in  a  like  way.  These  assertions 
of  exclusion  imply,  whether  made  in  behalf  of 
science  or  philosophy  or  religion,  or  against 
science  or  philosophy  or  religion,  either  that 
our  field  of  knowledgfe  is  much  more  circum- 
scribed  than  we  have  supposed  it  to  be,  or  that 
it  is  divided  into  parts,  first  alien,  then  hostile, 
to  each  other.  To  these  conceptions  we  op- 
pose that  of  the  unity  of  knowledge,  its  ex- 
haustless  nature  and  perpetual  expansion. 

The  differences  in  the  several  departments 
of  inquiry  have  been  so  exaggerated  that  they 
have  ceased  to  seem  amenable  to  the  same 
principles.  The  very  separation  into  depart- 
ments, as  in  so  many  other  cases  of  classifica- 
tion, has  been  given  a  significance  beyond  its 
proper  import.  The  three  leading  divisions 
are  science,  philosophy,  and  religion.  Though 
philosophy  and  religion  have  constantly  affili- 
ated, there  has  yet  been  no  Iktle  jealousy  cur- 


28  Evolution  and  Religion. 

rent  between  them.  The  devotee  of  a  particu- 
lar faith  has  disliked  to  subject  his  beliefs  to 
the  last  speculations  of  the  philosopher ;  and 
the  philosopher  has  refused  to  accept,  as  be- 
yond further  question,  the  conclusions  of  re- 
ligion already  attained.  Science,  as  more 
detached  in  its  pursuits  and  peculiar  in  its 
methods,  has  greatly  added,  as  against  the 
other  two,  to  this  sense  of  division.  Of  late 
years  we  have  heard  more  of  the  diversity  of 
knowledge  than  of  its  unity,  more  of  one 
method  of  inquiry  as  excluding  other  methods 
than  of  their  reconciliation  in  a  common  and 
complex  service. 

Laying  emphasis  on  prominent  diffa^eiiticE, 
we  may  define  descriptively  the  department  of 
knowledge  which  we  call  science  as  that  of 
physical  phenomena  collated  by  causes.  We 
may  define  philosophy  as  the  phenomena  of 
consciousness  collated  by  reasons,  justified 
comprehensively  to  themselves  ;  and  religion, 
as  the  facts  of  a  spiritual  world  accepted  in 
continuation  and  explanation  of  the  facts,  sen- 
suous and  supersensuous,  of  our  present  form 
of  existence.  Under  these  definitions  of  broad 
contrast,  science  prepares  the  way  for  philoso- 
phy, and  both  make  way  for  religion.      The 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       29 

facts  of  the  world,  sensuously  apprehended, 
appeal  to  the  reason  of  man  for  their  widest 
interpretation  ;  and  this  interpretation  ripens 
into  a  belief  in  a  spiritual  life  which  encloses 
our  present  life.  The  mind  awakens  to  its 
own  comprehension,  and  to  the  comprehension 
of  the  world,  as  one  indivisible  process  ;  and  in 
this  comprehension  it  soon  finds  itself  sur- 
rounded by  a  penumbra  of  spiritual  concep- 
tions. Without  the  three,  no  one  of  the  three 
would  be  vigorously  prosecuted  for  any  con- 
siderable period.  The  impulses  generated  in 
any  one  of  them  carry  the  mind  over,  in  their 
fulfilment,  into  the  adjoining  fields.  We  can- 
not constantly  reflect  back  any  movement  on 
itself  without  slowly  destroying  it.  Any  sud- 
den elasticity  of  inquiry  is  usually  due  to  its 
escape  into  a  new  field. 

In  a  very  general  way  this  is  the  dependence 
of  the  three  departments.  They  are  all  de- 
partments of  knowledge  ;  and  the  knowledge 
of  one  flows  into,  sustains,  and  corrects  that  of 
the  other  two.  This  is  the  unity  of  the  field 
of  thought.  These  departments  have  been 
cultivated  in  undue  independence  of  one  an- 
other, and  aside  from  their  natural  order  ;  and 
there  have  been,  therefore,  corresponding  con- 


30  Evolution  and  Religion. 

fusion  and  conflict  in  the  results.  But  this  is 
a  transient  fact,  due  to  awkward  and  inade- 
quate methods.  The  true  method,  like  knowl- 
edge itself,  is  an  object  of  discovery. 

The  facts  of  the  external  world  cannot  be 
broadly  considered  without  giving  rise  to  many 
suggestions  which  they  themselves  do  not  an- 
swer. The  mind  can  no  more  forego  these 
suggestions  than  it  could  its  first  inquiry. 
They  are  all  fibres  of  one  root.  The  solution 
of  them  is  later,  more  uncertain,  more  variable, 
but  lies  as  truly  in  the  world  as  the  very  first 
investigation.  These  successive  steps  of  reso- 
lution must  lead,  have  always  led,  enterprising 
minds  to  spiritual  beliefs,  later  links  in  the 
chain  of  thoucrht.  The  whole  chain  holds  to- 
gether  or  grows  weak  together.  Taken  col- 
lectively, it  gives  a  firm  and  comprehensive 
attachment  of  our  complex  lives  to  the  uni- 
verse In  which  we  are.  We  are  entitled  to  the 
whole  of  It  for  the  same  reason  that  we  are 
entitled  to  any  part  of  It.  Nothing  less  than 
the  whole  of  It  can  subserve,  or  ever  has  sub- 
served, the  purposes  of  our  physical,  Intellect- 
ual, and  spiritual  being. 

The  extreme  difference  In  these  three  de- 
partments lies  between  science   and   religion, 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       31 

while  philosophy  Is  the  pivotal  point  on  which 
they  are  balanced.  Let  us  look  a  little  more 
exactly  at  this  relation.  A  system  of  philoso- 
phy underlies,  In  a  latent  way,  all  science, 
precisely  as  It  underlies  all  experience.  Our 
philosophy,  good  or  bad,  alms  simply  to  ren- 
der our  experience  In  terms  of  reason.  Our 
dally  experience,  and  our  science  as  well,  come 
to  us  In  terms  of  matter  and  of  mind,  as  causes 
and  reasons  ;  and  we  fall  into  no  pit  simply  be- 
cause we  raise  no  questions  as  to  the  nature  and 
validity  of  these  distinctions.  If  we  should 
undertake  to  lay  aside  In  use  the  distinctions 
themselves,  our  knowledge  would  collapse  as 
suddenly  as  a  tent  whose  cords  we  had  cut. 
As  long  as  sensuous  facts  are  distinguished 
from  supersensuous  ones, — the  phenomena  of 
matter  from  the  phenomena  of  mind — we  shall 
have  laid  upon  us  the  relation  of  these  two  to 
each  other,  and  the  rational  renderings  of  them 
which  keep  them  apart. 

As  a  fact,  therefore,  very  many  distinguished 
scientists,  whose  faculties  have  been  thor- 
oughly awakened,  are  constantly  raising  philo- 
sophical and  religious  questions.  They  differ 
only  from  those  who  primarily  devote  them- 
selves  to   these  inquiries  in  the  form  of  the 


32  Evolution  and  Religion. 

answer  they  give  them.  They  become  philos- 
ophers, and  are  to  be  judged  as  philosophers. 
The  simple  scientist  is  one  who  accepts  bodily 
the  popular  philosophy,  and  raises  no  ques- 
tions aorainst  it. 

The  scientist  carries  forward  his  investiga- 
tions under  resources  of  knowledge,  and  a  disci- 
pline of  mind,  much  of  which  has  been  secured 
in  connection  with  philosophy.  Philosophy, 
barren  as  many  of  its  speculations  may  seem 
to  have  been,  has  been  the  intellectual  gym- 
nasium of  the  world.  No  wise  man  will  think 
that  without  its  awakenings,  its  tentative 
efforts,  men  would  have  found  their  way  suc- 
cessfully into  empirical  inquiry.  The  notions 
of  causation  and  of  law,  while  they  have  been 
made  far  more  explicit  by  science,  have  gone 
before  science,  and  been  its  first  terms.  The 
inductive  logic  has  not  itself  been  a  product 
of  induction,  but  of  reflective  thought.  Men 
like  John  Stuart  Mill,  of  a  philosophical  habit 
of  mind,  have  furnished  it  as  a  formal  system, 
while  as  a  practical  power  it  has  arisen  in  the 
rational  depths  of  every  sound  experience.  A 
mind  not  full  of  philosophy  can  no  more  give 
clear  reflection  to  scientific  conceptions  than 
roiled  waters  can  yield  a  well-defined   image. 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledg^e.       33 


fe 


The  light  which  has  searched  out  the  world  has 
come  aslant  from  the  spaces  above  the  world. 

We  ought  not  to  expect  that  science  should 
be  as  directly  associated  with  religion  as  is 
religion  with  science.  Science,  as  a  primary 
kind  of  knowledge,  gives  form  to  later  convic- 
tions rather  than  receives  form  from  them ; 
yet  in  two  respects  science  plainly  suffers 
from  the  absence  of  a  wise  spiritual  temper. 
The  physical  world  has  its  spiritual  sugges- 
tions. The  mind  must  be  open  to  them,  or  it 
puts  upon  itself  a  good  deal  of  barren  work. 
Take,  as  an  example,  the  presence  of  final 
causes.  It  is  not  the  office  of  science,  in  any 
hio^h  decrree,  to  trace  these  causes ;  it  is 
rather  its  habit  of  mind,  in  the  assiduous  pur- 
suit of  efficient  causes,  to  neglect  them.  If, 
however,  it  accepts  a  presumption  against 
them,  and  studiously  rules  them  out,  it  as 
certainly  drops  into  a  narrow,  predisposed 
method  as  if  it  had  undertaken  to  establish 
them  in  any  given  form.  A  light  which  comes 
only  from  the  rear  casts  deep,  unsoftened 
shadows,  and  prevents  the  world  from  appear- 
ing exactly  what  it  is — luminous  on  many  sides. 

If,  moreover,  science  sets  itself  the  task  of 
shutting  out  the  spiritual  side  of  our  lives,  its 


34  Evolution  and  Religion. 

results,  however  accurate  they  may  be  in  them- 
selves, will  meet  with  less  fortunate  social  uses. 
The  evils  and  darkness  of  the  social  world,  like 
mists  and  clouds  in  the  sky,  will  slowly  settle 
down  upon  inquiry,  and  shut  it  out  from  its 
own  proper  work.  Science,  as  a  movement  of 
mind,  must  have  its  own  adequate  impulses, 
its  proper  inspirations.  That  inspiration  is 
not  simply  truth,  but  truth  as  the  food  of  the 
spirit.  Here,  with  the  spirit  of  man,  is  the 
ultimate  consumption  of  all  inteUectual  good  ; 
and  this  appetite  must  in  all  ways  be  nour- 
ished as  the  only  adequate  and  permanent 
incentive  to  action.  A  wholesome,  invigorat- 
ing atmosphere  can  come  to  the  student  of 
nature — and  without  it  he  is  sooner  or  later 
asphyxiated — only  from  the  entire  field  of 
knowledge,  the  field  in  which  truth  is  put  to 
its  highest  and  most  rewardful  uses. 

If  we  turn  to  the  other  extreme,  religion, 
this  dependence  of  the  departments  of  knowl- 
edge on  each  other  is  still  more  obvious.  We 
have  in  religion  no  phase  of  thought  that  can 
with  any  show  of  reason  declare  itself  inde- 
pendent. The  fundamental  conceptions  in 
faith  are  those  of  the  being,  nature,  and  char- 
acter  of  God.     The  data  from  which  we  form 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledi^e.       35 


e^ 


and  establish  these  conceptions  are  given  us 
in  science  and  in  philosophy,  in  the  facts  of  the 
physical  and  moral  world.  Whether  we  regard 
these  proofs  as  satisfactory  or  unsatisfactory, 
there  are  none  other  ;  and  so  the  very  founda- 
tions of  belief  repose  on  the  soil  of  the  world, 
and  its  entire  superstructure  is  enveloped  in 
its  atmosphere.  No  positive  personal  revela- 
tion can  successfully  contradict  this  testimony 
of  the  facts  of  our  lives  to  the  attributes  of 
God.  The  world,  as  the  antecedent,  compre- 
hensive fact  of  divine  creation,  must  easily 
carry  with  it  in  interpretation  all  its  subse- 
quent parts.  We  can  get  no  standpoint  for 
religion,  either  physical  or  spiritual,  outside 
of  these  phenomena,  which  completely  envelop 
us.  Any  one  who  should  declare  to  us  other 
thines  than  those  which  are  to  be  found  in  the 
record  of  events,  would  speak  in  an  unknown 
tonofue.  A  most  striking:  feature  in  the  teach- 
ing  of  Christ  was  a  ready  and  constant  reflec- 
tion of  spiritual  lessons  in  physical  events.  His 
ever-returning  parables  made  the  two  worlds 
flow  together  as  text  and  illustration  in  one 
movement  of  thought.  Physical  things  seemed 
only  the  predetermined  reflection  of  spiritual 
things. 


36  Evolution  and  Religion. 

Neither  can  any  dogma  or  rite  or  discipline 
of  religion  establish  successfully  any  intellect- 
ual training  or  ethical  schooling  that  is  not  in 
harmony  with  the  nature  of  man  as  played 
upon  by  its  physical  and  social  circumstances. 
This  has  been  tried  again  and  again,  as  in  as- 
ceticism, and  has  come  to  nought.  As  long  as 
we  conceive  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil 
as  alien  to  men,  we  fight  a  losing  battle  in  ref- 
erence to  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  Our  vic- 
tories must  be  achieved  with  and  through  the 
forces  which  enclose  us.  The  whole  creation 
travails  together,  and  together  waits  on  redemp- 
tion. It  is  true  that  the  individual  may  find  a 
spiritual  discipline  under  narrow  and  faulty 
conditions,  but  that  discipline  largely  lies  in 
slowly  casting  them  off.  No  matter  how 
many  convulsive  changes  and  millenniums  re- 
ligion may  promise  itself,  we  see  that  they  do 
not  come.  Our  Christian  faith,  amid  all  its 
prophetic  gleams,  has  travelled  a  weary  road  of 
discipline,  in  which  nothing  has  been  gained 
save  in  the  slowest,  most  empirical  method. 
It  is  utterly  in  vain  that  our  religious  beliefs 
contradict  nature  :  nature  still  has  her  own  way. 
Man  can  no  more  rise  above  the  spiritual  world 
to  which  he  belongs,  or  declare  himself  inde- 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       zi 

pendent  of  it,  than  the  fish  can  swim  without 
water  or  the  bird  fly  without  air. 

We  can,  then,  in  no  way  establish  three  de- 
partments of  knowledge  whose  conclusions  are 
even  proximately  indifferent  to  one  another. 
The  religionist  cannot  say,  "  I  accept  science 
in  its  own  field,  but  I  warn  It  off  from  the  field 
of  faith."  No  more  can  the  scientist  say,  "  I 
busy  myself  with  the  verifiable  facts  of  the 
world,  all  beyond  these  Is  changeable  and  illu- 
sory, a  province  I  have  no  occasion  to  enter." 
The  body  Is  no  more  dependent  on  the  mind, 
and  the  mind  no  more  dependent  on  the  body, 
and  both  no  more  dependent  on  the  service  of 
the  world  to  them,  than  are  our  forms  of 
thought  on  one  another. 

A  second  attempted  separation  of  these  de- 
partments Is  made  to  rest  on  the  facts  which 
they  concern.  Science  pertains  to  present, 
physical,  and  natural  events.  Religion  per- 
tains to  future,  spiritual,  and  supernatural 
events.  Religion  Is  a  revelation,  and  must  be 
discussed  In  Its  own  llcrht.  Science  Is  a  dis- 
closure  of  a  certain  narrow  class  of  things  as 
they  He  about  us,  and  aims  at  no  transforma- 
tion of  them. 

There    are    two    sufficient    answers    to   this 


38  Evolution  and  Religion. 


method  of  regarding  the  subject.  The  dog- 
mas of  faith — confining  our  attention  to  Chris- 
tianity, and  the  case  is  still  stronger  if  we  go 
beyond  it — are  very  diverse  between  them- 
selves, are  the  remote  and  inferential  product 
of  the  Scriptures,  and  have  suffered  the  re- 
peated and  painful  elaboration  of  the  human 
mind.  If  we  were  to  admit  all  that  is  claimed 
in  behalf  of  the  Oracles  as  divine,  still  these 
conflicting  beliefs  remain  to  be  substantiated 
with  no  little  interpretation,  no  light  criticism, 
no  obscure  philosophy.  As  offered  to  us,  they 
are  shaped  by  theological  thought  in  every, 
part  of  them  ;  in  every  part  of  them  have  met 
with  acceptance  or  rejection,  according  to  a 
bias  of  mind.  The  facts  before  us  are  not  a 
plain,  perspicuous  revelation  on  the  one  side, 
and  doubtful  speculation  on  the  other,  but 
universal  speculation  everywhere.  The  as- 
sumption of  a  distinct  and  final  revelation  is  a 
pure  assumption,  which  each  phase  of  faith 
makes  in  its  own  behalf  and  against  every 
other  phase. 

The  moment  we  enter  on  the  common  work 
of  criticism,  and  a  doctrinal  construction  sub- 
ject to  criticism,  we  can  by  no  possibility  keep 
science  and  philosophy  and  religion  apart.     We 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       39 

oftentimes  content  ourselves  with  a  very  gen- 
eral definition  of  doctrine — as,  for  example,  the 
doctrine  of  inspiration — simply  because  we  can- 
not construct  a  more  full  and  explicit  one  which 
will  bear  successfully  the  criticism  of  science 
and  philosophy.  We  have  made  our  words 
thin  and  shadowy,  that  we  may  thereby  become 
invulnerable. 

Shall  we  call  historical  criticism  a  science,  or 
a  philosophy  ?  It  pertains  to  sensuous  facts, 
but  It  does  not  treat  them  on  their  sensuous 
side.  It  has  as  much  to  do  with  reasons  as 
with  causes,  and  often  proceeds  on  those  sub- 
tle estimates  of  human  nature,  of  spiritual 
phenomena  and  ethical  method,  which  pertain 
to  religion.  The  Irreligious  nature  can  hardly 
yield  a  sound  criticism  of  Biblical  history,  any 
more  than  an  inartistic  mind  can  give  us  an 
Instructive  rendering  of  a  work  of  art.  No 
more  can  the  Intensely  religious  nature  do  this 
work  well.  Yet  historical  criticism  we  must 
have.  Take  the  Scriptures  In  their  super- 
natural and  natural  material,  with  all  the  con- 
cessions and  all  the  claims  of  faith  upon  them, 
and  we  have  still  to  frame  out  of  them,  with 
only  the  ordinary  resources  of  thought,  a  co- 
herent and  intelllorlble  belief.     We  know  full 


40  Evolution  and  Religion. 

well  how  East  and  West,  in  scores  of  distinct 
symbols,  this  work  has  been  done  and  undone 
according  to  the  prevalent  philosophy,  and 
how  it  remains  to  be  redone  as  we  acquire  a 
more  direct  and  empirical  outlook  on  the 
events  with  which  these  spiritual  beliefs  are 
interlaced.  We  have,  then,  no  rendering  of 
religious  belief  which  has,  as  contrasted  with 
other  beliefs,  any  certain  claim  to  authority. 

Not  only  is  criticism  very  much  divided  in 
its   results  :    the   rellcrlous  facts  of    the  world 

o 

to  which  it  pertains  do  not  lie  apart  and  dis- 
tinguishable. They  are  not  given  by  them- 
selves as  of  their  own  order  :  they  are  united 
to  other  facts  of  every  variety  of  mundane 
character.  We  may  span  a  river  without  a 
pier ;  but  if  we  drop  midway  a  support,  we 
must  be  prepared  to  encounter  the  undermin- 
ing current.  The  claim  of  complete  inspira- 
tion, taking  under  its  protection  the  physical 
facts  associated  with  revelation,  has  given 
way  ;  and  its  failure  should  admonish  us  that 
religious  truth  is  nowhere  offered  to  us  disas- 
sociated with  other  truth,  and  safely  poised 
within  itself.  It  is  always  fully  involved  in 
the  complex  flow  of  events. 

The  attack  on  miracles,  regarded  as  pivotal 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledo:e.       41 


^5 


points  in  faith,  arose  no  more  from  science 
than  from  philosophy.  It  was  the  very  uses 
of  the  miracle  in  the  mind  itself  that  gave  way. 
The  evidence  of  science  is  simply  negative. 
It  does  not  find  in  nature  an  analogon  of 
the  facts  associated  with  revelation.  If  there 
was  nothing  in  the  supernatural  facts  them- 
selves to  embarrass  the  mind,  this  testimony  of 
science  would  be  comparatively  weak.  Philos- 
ophy enters  in  to  make  the  solution  of  the  su- 
pernatural most  difficult.  Philosophy  grounds 
itself  on  the  coherence  of  reason  with  itself, 
its  wise  uniformity  of  method.  It  is  in  at- 
tempting to  learn  the  lesson  involved  in  the 
miracles  that  we  meet  our  chief  embarrass- 
ment— an  embarrassment  we  cannot  shake  off, 
as  it  arises  within  the  religious  life  itself.  We 
are  admonished  of  the  credulity  and  folly  as- 
sociated in  human  history  with  miracles  ;  the 
impossibility  of  accepting  this  tendency,  in  the 
minds  of  men,  to  ill-grounded  belief,  with  no 
purifying  process  of  thought ;  the  extended 
mischief  within  the  Christian  system  which  has 
attended  on  this  facility  of  faith.  Religion 
cannot  handle  its  own  statements  without 
raising,  concerning  them,  all  the  questions  of 
science  and  philosophy. 


42  Evolution  and  Religion. 


^5' 


We  are  not  attempting  to  resolve  this  great 
problem  :  we  are  only  drawing  attention  to  the 
fact  that  this  particular  pier,  the  miracle,  which 
was  built  up  in  mid-stream  to  support  the  lofty 
highway  of  religious  belief,  chanced  to  rest 
where  the  current  has  proved  strongest  and 
most  treacherous.  We  did  not  get  above  the 
danger  by  means  of  it,  but  into  the  midst  of 
it.  We  cannot  always  remain  in  the  air ;  and 
the  moment  we  touch  water  or  land,  we  must 
be  ready  to  encounter  the  urgent  conditions  of 
the  case  before  us.  Because  religion  offers  us 
such  a  variety  of  facts  essential  to  its  later 
conclusions,  science  and  philosophy,  and  reli- 
gion itself,  lay  hold  of  these  facts,  and  test  them 
in  every  way  as  to  the  uses  to  which  they  are 
to  be  put.  So  it  ought  to  be,  so  it  must  be. 
Nothing  can  by  any  possibility  touch  the  world 
of  matter,  touch  the  world  of  mind,  without  en- 
countering their  laws.  Each  thing  is  there  for 
that  very  purpose.  These  lines  of  contact  may 
have  for  us  a  very  discouraging  vagueness,  but 
they  are  not  for  that  reason  less  truly  inter- 
esting. They  are  like  the  magnetic  poles  of 
the  earth — centres  of  very  fugitive  but  very 
potent  forces. 

A   separation   is   sometimes   attempted   be- 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledo^e.       43 


i!5 


tween  relio^ious  truth  and  other  forms  of  truth 
by  the  assertion  that  man  is  possessed  of  cer- 
tain powers  of  apprehension  which  find  exchi- 
sive  play  in  the  religious  world.  If  this 
assertion  were  true,  we  might  see  in  it  a 
ground  for  a  fundamental  division.  Spiritual 
convictions  would  fall  off  from  secular  know- 
ledge as  colors  separate  themselves  from 
sounds.  Faith  Is  frequently  made  this  super- 
sensuous  power.  Consciousness  Is  sometimes 
o-Iven  such  an  extension  as  to  render  It  an  or- 
gan  of  direct  approach  to  God.  Occasionally 
an  intuitive  faculty  is  asserted,  having  the 
range  of  the  spiritual  world.  These  assertions 
lack  probability,  and  lack  proof.  They  lack 
probability,  because  a  religious  life  which  rests 
on  exceptional  powers,  or  powers  In  an  excep- 
tional stage  of  development,  would  be  so  di- 
vorced from  the  life  we  are  now  leading  as  to 
become  quite  estranged  from  it.  Indeed,  this 
result  has  been  frequently  accepted,  and,  when 
not  declared,  has  been  Involved  In  the  doc- 
trines of  election,  regeneration,  reprobation. 
All  minds  do  not  feel  the  Infinite  Improbability 
of  this  castlng-off  of  the  mass  of  men  by  the 
world  and  by  God, — this  cutting  Into  distinct 
and  unlike  parts  the  seamless  web  of  life, — but 


44  Evolution  and  Religion. 

the  philosophical  instinct  of  the  human  mind 
does  feel  it,  and  rises  up  in  rejection  of  it. 
Continuity  is  the  very  substance  of  thought  and 
of  life  ;  and  continuity  in  the  highest  things  is 
affirmed  with  the  accumulated  force  of  reason 
gathered  in  the  entire  field  of  knowledge. 

This  distinction  of  powers  utterly  lacks 
proof.  Faith — trust  in  persons,  trust  in  the 
processes  of  thought — is  a  tendency  which 
every  man  has  occasion  to  watch  over.  Those 
who  claim  an  intuition  of  God  have  no  other 
revelation  to  make  of  him  than  that  with  which 
we  are  all  familiar.  Guided  by  experience,  we 
deny,  in  the  self-elected  to  light,  any  new  phe- 
nomena— any  superiority  of  power,  any  tran- 
scendency in  virtue — which  need  in  explanation 
the  alleeed  additional  resources.  If  we  can- 
not  ourselves  fly,  we  should  at  least  be  glad  to 
see  those  who  do  fly  ;  and  as  yet,  to  the  candid 
and  thoughtful  mind,  they  remain  Invisible. 
We  assert  this  identity  of  endowment  not  In 
derogation,  but  In  exaltation,  of  human  worth. 
We  know  of  no  psychology  of  saint  or  sinner 
which  indicates  anything  more  than  the  use  or 
the  neglect  of  powers  the  same  for  all.  All 
ways  are  open  to  us,  and  all  ways  are  closed  to 
us,  according  as  we  are  disposed  to  pursue  them. 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       45 

Another  line  of  demarcation  between  de- 
partments of  inquiry  has  been  found  in  the 
methods  of  reasoning  employed  in  them.  In- 
ductive methods  predominate  in  science  ;  de- 
ductive ones,  in  philosophy  and  religion.  This 
difference  is  often  exaggerated,  and  then  re- 
garded as  fundamental.  The  real  advantage 
of  physical  facts  over  intellectual  ones  as  sub- 
jects of  inquiry  is  found  in  their  greater  sim- 
plicity and  permanency  of  form.  Our  senses 
return  to  us  phenomena  whose  variations  are 
much  less  rapid  and  obscure  than  are  the 
changes  in  the  shifting  experiences  of  con- 
sciousness. There  is,  therefore,  a  sense  of 
stability  which  accompanies  the  one  series  of 
impressions,  and  is  unattainable  by  the  other. 
This  stability  gives  ease  in  the  use  of  induc- 
tion in  physical  inquiries,  and  the  want  of  it 
embarrasses  the  mind  in  the  pursuit  of  intel- 
lectual law. 

There  is,  however,  no  distinction  in  these 
departments  of  thought  which  makes  induction 
peculiar  to  one,  or  deduction  to  another.  The 
two  forms  of  logic  are  freely  commingled  in 
every  investigation.  There  is  scarcely  more 
than  one  kind  of  knowledge  that  is  exclusively 
dependent  on  one  kind  of  reasoning ;  and  that 


4^  Evolution  and  Religion. 

knowledge  is  pure  mathematics,  built  up  by 
deduction.  In  this  instance,  at  least,  deduc- 
tion shows  no  inferiority  in  the  certainty  of  its 
results  to  the  highest  attainments  of  induction. 
Any  reasoning  which  pertains  to  facts,  and  not 
to  the  pure  forms  of  thought,  must  contain 
both  inductive  and  deductive  elements — induc- 
tion as  putting  us  in  possession  of  the  facts, 
and  deduction  as  making  that  possession  fruit- 
ful. The  breadth  and  stability  of  our  knowl- 
edge turn  not  on  the  one  or  the  other  form  of 
thought,  but  on  the  skill  with  which  both  are 
employed.  It  is  impossible  to  escape  this  ad- 
mission, unless  we  assert,  with  Mill,  that  all  de- 
duction is  disguised  induction.  In  that  case, 
we  are  far  out  in  the  swim  of  metaphysics, 
and  it  is  a  question  which  concerns  ourselves 
chiefly,  what  shore  we  shall  reach,  or  whether 
we  shall  reach  any  shore. 

If  we  use  words  as  men  use  them,  we  shall 
see  that  science  does  not  rest  exclusively  on 
induction,  nor  religion  on  deduction.  Know- 
ledge is  not  a  matter  of  the  senses  simply,  no 
more  is  it  of  the  forms  of  thought  taken  by 
themselves.  The  senses  give  us  the  material 
of  knowledge,  which  the  mind  unfolds.  The 
relations,  and  the  thincrs  between  which  the  re- 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       47 

latlons  hold,  constitute  inseparable  parts  of  our 
convictions.  Not  till  we  have  gathered  the  facts 
together  in  a  wise  induction  do  we  oret  the  safe 
footing  of  thought ;  not  till  we  pass  beyond 
this  footing,  carrying  our  conclusions  with  us, 
do  we  experience  the  expansive,  guiding  power 
of  truth.  Induction  is  for  deduction,  deduction 
is  the  fruition  of  induction. 

A  deduction  closely  associated  with  induc- 
tion, and  which  everywhere  goes  with  it,  is  the 
conviction  of  the  uniformity  of  nature — that  a 
conclusion  good  for  one  set  of  facts  is  good  for 
all  similar  facts  ;  that  the  truths  of  to-day  are 
also  those  of  to-morrow.  This  ever-present 
postulate  of  inquiry  is  the  deductive  fruit  of 
that  primitive  conviction  that  like  causes  are 
followed  by  like  effects.  The  intimate  way 
in  which  induction  and  deduction  thus  touch 
each  other  and  confirm  each  other,  serves  only 
to  show  what  essential  parts  they  are  of  one 
vital  movement  of  mind.  No  induction  can 
cover  any  considerable  part  of  the  facts  to 
which  it  pertains.  It  is  impossible  to  push  any 
induction  to  a  finish  ;  and  we  make  no  effort 
to  do  so,  because  we  are  aware  that  shortly  it 
entitles  us  to  a  rapid  and  safe  deduction.  We 
carry  the  inquiry  further,  or  stop  sooner,  ac- 


4^  Evolution  and  Religfion. 


^ 


cording  to  the  complexity  of  the  causes  with 
which  we  are  dealing,  and  our  certainty  that 
we  have  grasped  them  in  their  own  nature. 
The  moment  we  are  sure  that  we  have  in  hand 
the  forces  Involved  in  the  inquiry,  we  desist 
from  further  examination  as  superfluous.  We 
have  then  fallen  on  the  paths  of  reason.  The 
simplicity  and  stability  of  physical  facts  make 
this  limit  more  quickly  attainable  In  science, 
and  leave  us  sooner  free  for  a  new  Inquiry. 

Nor  Is  this  constant  expansion  of  our  prem- 
ises the  only  deductive  force  of  mind  present 
in  Induction.  Empirical  Inquiries  always  imply 
a  separation  of  phenomena — a  reference  of 
them  by  parts  to  different  causes  ;  a  tracing, 
amid  complex  sensuous  appearances,  of  certain 
results  that  are  thought  to  be  dependent  on 
each  other.  Now,  this  anticipatory,  elective 
movement,  on  which  the  frultfulness  of  observa- 
tion and  experiment  Is  dependent.  Is  of  a  deduc- 
tive order.  1 1  Is  seeing  where  probable  depend- 
encies are  to  be  found,  what  things  Involve  each 
other.  The  skilful  Inquirer  is  never  In  a  simply 
sensuous  state  of  mind,  but  In  an  exceedingly 
active,  penetrating  one,  directing  his  attenton 
to  the  pregnant  facts.  The  movement  of  mind 
is  from  within  outwards  rather  than  from  with- 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       49 

out  inwards.  The  informing  force,  therefore, 
of  induction  is  always  deduction — a  following 
of  the  clews  of  thouo^ht.  The  corrective  ten- 
dency  in  deduction  is  induction ;  and  this  fact 
leads  us,  not  to  a  distinction  in  subject-matter 
between  physical  and  spiritual  inquiries,  but  to 
a  difference  in  the  ease  with  which  the  two  ele- 
ments of  knowledge,  the  outer  fact  and  its  intel- 
lectual law,  are  combined.  In  religious  thought 
we  are  often  as  one  who  entertains  a  beautiful 
vision  and  refuses  to  open  his  eyes  lest  it 
should  be  dissipated. 

In  matters  of  faith,  deductive  guidance  is 
more  extended ;  inductive  correction,  more 
remote  and  obscure  :  hence  we  have  often 
allowed  the  one  to  proceed  quite  too  independ- 
ently of  the  other,  and  have  lost  our  way  among 
empty  and  detached  speculations.  Spiritual 
beliefs  are  as  certainly  subject  to  inductive 
confirmation  as  are  the  conclusions  of  science. 
If  we  are  dealing  in  thought  with  the  crovern- 
ment  of  God,  the  nature  of  man,  the  regen- 
erative processes  in  the  human  spirit,  the 
corrective  powers  in  the  spiritual  world,  phe- 
nomena appropriate  to  the  inquiry  are  every- 
where about  us.  If  we  construct  our  dogmatic 
theories  in  overslo-ht  of  the  facts,  we  do  It  with 


50  Evolution  and  Religion. 

a  certain  inexcusable  wilfulness.     If  we  affirm 
that    the   heart    of    man  is  perfectly  perverse, 
and  his   mind  wholly  blind  to  spiritual  truth, 
we  are  in  neglect  of  things  very  near  to  us  in  our 
daily  life.     We  override    our  experience  by  a 
theory  concerning  it,  instead  of  framing    our 
theory  in   immediate   reference   to  it.      If  we 
declare  that  God  cannot  freely  forgive  sin,  it  is 
because  we  have  not  recognized  that  inductive 
law    which    is    established    by    observing    the 
results  of  forgiveness  among  men.      The  many 
mistakes  of  religion  prove  the  likeness  of  the 
two  fields,  that  induction  must  accompany  and 
correct  deduction  as  certainly  in  spiritual  as  in 
physical  things.     The  difference  between  them 
is  not  one  of  kind,  but  of  degree  ;  is  found  in  the 
more  fugitive  and  perplexed  form  of  intellect- 
ual phenomena.     An  inductive  epoch  is  being 
entered  on  in  religious  inquiry,  and  is  becoming 
fruitful  in  many  directions.      Look  on  science, 
philosophy,  and  religion  as  we  will,  we  shall 
find    diversity,    not    division,    between     them. 
They  are  parts   of  one  kingdom  of  truth,  not 
distinct  kingdoms  subject  to  wholly  different 
laws.     The    affirmation   of  the    unity    of    all 
knowledge  Is  nothing  more  than  an  assertion  of 
the  omnipresence  of  causes  and  reasons.     The 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       51 

Impulse  which  leads  us  to  concede  a  cause  at 
all  must  lead  us  to  concede  it  universally  :  if 
we  once  ask  for  a  reason,  we  must  ask  for  it 
again  and  again.  There  are  no  planes  of 
cleavage  which  these  movements  of  mind  may 
not  traverse. 

This  union  between  all  forms  of  knowledge 
in  subject-matter,  in  method  of  inquiry,  in  the 
aid  and  correction  they  bring  each  other,  is 
established  beyond  denial  by  the  doctrine  of 
evolution.  Evolution  is  a  movement  which 
extends  through  all  fields,  is  continuous  in  all, 
and  completed  by  all.  It  is  a  living  current 
which  threads  its  way  across  every  shallow  and 
by  every  lagoon,  drawing  their  waters  with 
greater  or  less  rapidity  into  the  one  river. 

Physical  evolution,  long  and  bright  as  are 
the  stretches  by  which  it  has  come  down  to  us, 
has  measurably  reached  its  destination.  Look- 
ing at  the  very  superior  and  complex  structure 
of  man,  we  are  not  prepared  to  see  it  displaced 
in  the  lead  of  life  by  any  new  physical  organ- 
ization. There  is  no  indication  of  such  a  result 
in  the  facts  before  us.  The  body  of  man  may 
be  greatly  improved  in  power,  but  it  suggests 
a  limit  to  physical  refinements  rather  than  a 
promise  to  take  them  up  at  some  new  point. 


52  Evolution  and  Relimon. 

Trees  that  are  rooted  in  a  soil  much  the  same 
forever,  and  that  are  to  encounter  ever-return- 
ing storms,  find  therein  a  boundary  of  devel- 
opment. Nervous  tissue,  subject  to  the  gross 
stimuli  of  the  physical  world,  cannot  take  on 
all  phases  of  sensibility.  There  is  an  ultimate 
fitness  of  relation  which  defines  itself  and  ar- 
rests movement  as  we  approach  it.  We  do 
not  see,  therefore,  how  this  stream,  beeinninor 
to  be  shut  in  and  to  head  back  on  itself,  can 
renew  its  flow  in  the  physical  world  simply. 
When,  however,  we  put  in  place  of  physical 
life,  social  and  spiritual  life,  the  current  at  once 
shows  new  force.  It  pours  over  the  present 
barriers,  seeks  remote  places,  and  takes  possess- 
ion of  distant  periods.  We  are  just  at  the 
beginning  of  intellectual  life  ;  and  we  must  give 
it  in  evolution,  as  its  latest  and  highest  product, 
all  the  significance  which  belongs  to  it.  Where 
evolution  has  placed  it,  the  fruit  of  one  stage 
and  the  germinant  force  of  another,  we  must 
place  it.  What  evolution  puts  highest  is  high- 
est by  an  ordination  which  runs  back  to  the 
very  beginning. 

Evolution  is  not  simply  continuity,  it  is  de- 
velopment. As  man's  physical  structure,  in 
reference  to  animal  life,  is  a  goal,  so  also  is  the 
perfecting  of   human   society  a  goal   in   refer- 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       53 

ence  to  human  history  and  all  the  races  of 
men.  It  is  at  once  continuation  and  diversity, 
movement  and  consummation.  Evolution  in- 
volves equally  both  notions.  The  movement 
is  not  aimless,  the  aim  is  not  foreign  to  the 
movement.  We  should  feel  the  full  implica- 
tion of  evolution.  It  does  not  overwhelm  us 
with  physical  forces,  it  marshals  them  all  for 
our  largest  service. 

The  transition  we  are  making  from  the  phys- 
ical to  the  spiritual  world  as  the  chief  seat  of 
incentives,  while  it  is  a  bold  one,  is  also  one  of 
the  closest  genetic  dependence  and  of  the 
most  comprehensive  and  inclusive  sweep. 
Nothing  is  neglected,  nothing  left  behind. 
The  physical  and  the  spiritual  are  built  together 
as  one  kingdom, — a  kingdom  that  we  can  de- 
clare to  be  neither  physical  nor  spiritual,  but 
both  ;  each  in  the  other  in  an  indivisible  fashion,, 
as  inspiration  and  elevation  in  a  cathedral 
The  science  of  the  world  and  the  art  of  the  world 
cohabit  in  one  home, — a  home  whose  resources 
are  just  beginning  to  be  developed.  The  fine 
art  of  the  world  and  the  spiritual  life  of  the 
world  are  born  into  this  household  as  at  once 
of  it  and  beyond  it,  the  fruit  of  one  living 
movement. 

Though  the  simple  fact  that  the  social  pow- 


54  Evolution  and  Religion. 

ers  of  men  rest  wholly  back  on  the  physical 
forces  of  the  world,  that  these  forces  thus 
mount  up  into  a  spiritual  realm  quite  beyond 
them, — as  a  plant  of  rugged  stem  and  prickly 
leaf  suddenly  breaks  out  in  a  flower  of  tran- 
scendent form  and  color — is  so  evident  and  so 
wonderful  as  to  make  evolution  the  crowning 
law  of  the  universe,  it  does  not  express  all  that 
is  contained  in  that  idea  as  brineinof  into  har- 
mony  the  several  departments  of  our  Hves  and 
making  our  knowlege  identical  and  forceful  in 
every  part  of  it.  It  was  this  unity  we  started 
to  enforce. 

The  two  elements  in  the  world  which  we 
find  equally  indispensable  in  our  apprehension 
of  it,  but  in  reconciling  which  we  also  meet 
with  much  difficulty,  are  matter  and  mind. 
Though  the  world  itself  shows  no  plane  of 
cleavage  between  them,  men  are  constantly 
splitting  it  into  parts  along  this  line  of  analy- 
sis. The  vision  of  men,  like  Iceland  spar, 
polarizes  the  light,  and  gathers  Its  sundered 
rays  at  distinct  centres.  A  philosophy  of 
heroic  methods  strives  to  subject  mental  pro- 
cesses to  the  laws  of  physical  processes,  or  it 
labors  hard  to  gather  up  all  physical  connect- 
ions Into  mental  ones.      Only  at  rare  and  sane 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       55 

intervals  Is  it  content  to  accept  the  world  as  it 
finds  it — an  equilibrium  of  the  two  in  one  indi- 
visible product.  Evolution  as  a  law  helps  us 
at  this  point.  While  it  makes  neither  the 
materialistic  nor  the  idealistic  tendency  impos- 
sible, it  discloses,  through  long  periods,  their 
reciprocal  correction  of  each  other,  and  the 
growing  interlock  of  physical  and  intellectual 
forces  in  knowledge.  It  declares  for  neither. 
They  have,  In  development,  sustained  from 
time  to  time  a  different  balance  In  reference 
to  each  other  ;  but  they  have  both  been  uni- 
formly present.  The  increasing  refinements 
of  the  material  world  have  served  to  make  it 
an  ever  more  perfect  medium  of  mind.  The 
physical  terms  have  preceded  the  Intellectual 
ones,  and  prepared  the  way  for  them.  The 
mental  element  does  not  offer  itself  as  a  sim- 
ple, uniform  ingredient  of  matter,  but  as  one 
steadily  superinduced  upon  It,  united  with  It 
under  the  processes  of  evolution.  Evolution 
distinguishes  the  two  terms  of  experience, 
emphasizes  their  constructive  relation  to  each 
other,  and  pushes  the  mind  forward  in  antici- 
pation to  a  still  more  perfect  Interplay.  It 
shows  no  tendency  to  merge  the  one  In  the 
other,  or  make  less  bold  their  contrast.     The 


56  Evolution  and  Relioion 


fe 


world  never  ceases  to  be  physical,  or  ceases  to 
be  intellectual,  but  embraces,  in  its  progress- 
ive unfolding,  more  completely  both  elements. 
In  our  analysis  of  the  powers  of  mind,  there 
has  been  a  disposition  to  attach  a  validity  to  sens- 
uous perception,  which  has  not  been  conceded 
to  the  rational  ideas  which  accompany  it.    Some 
who  accept  color   and  form  are  stumbled  by 
forces  and  causes.      In  evolution,  however,  the 
sensuous    and    the    rational    renderines    are 
offered  as  one   indivisible  product  of  growth. 
Evolution  gives  no    confirmation    to  the  dis- 
tinction we  may  make  in  favor  of  sense-per- 
ception.     Its    movement    towards    knowledge 
includes,   and   by    including    establishes,   both 
ingredients.       We    might    as    well    disparage 
Instincts  In   animals,  as  compared  with  appe- 
tites,  because  the   Instinct  has  a  less  definite 
physical  basis,   as  to  think  slightingly  of  the 
forms  of  reason  In  contrast  with  their  sensu- 
ous  content.      Evolution,    as    one    whole,   dis- 
closes  this  very   tendency  of  reaching  terms 
ever  more  supersensuous,  and  of  carrying  its 
movement  forward  by  means  of   them.     This 
progressiveness  Is    of    the  very    substance   of 
evolution.      It  brings  the  higher  to  the  lower 
as    certainly    as    It    proffers  the   lower  to  the 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       57 

higher.  Knowledge  is  the  product  of  an  Indi- 
visible fascicle  of  powers  that  have  grown  up 
on  one  disc.  Better,  these  powers  are  the 
organs  of  one  flower,  productive  by  means  of 
them  all. 

Allied  to  this  contention  between  ph}'s- 
Ical  and  rational  terms  is  that  between  the 
natural  and  the  supernatural,  of  whose  strife, 
whose  inclusions  and  exclusions,  human 
thought  Is  now  full.  Evolution,  advancing 
along  a  line  of  exposition,  has  drawn  freely 
from  the  right  and  the  left,  from  sensuous 
and  supersensuous  sources,  for  Its  explanatory 
material.  The  expository  movement  Is  tak- 
ing on  a  marked  change  In  this  respect.  The 
supernatural  Is  coming  to  stand  In  a  different 
relation  to  the  natural  from  that  which  It  has 
hitherto  held.  Evolution  serves  to  unite  and 
to  explain  these  successive,  yet  contrasted, 
positions.  There  Is  a  unity  between  them  In 
spite  of  their  diversity.  There  are  a  depend- 
ence between  them,  and  a  needfulness  of  both, 
which  make  of  them  a  necessary  sequence  in 
the  growth  of  knowledge — parts  of  one  evo- 
lutionary process.  What  we  are  really  occu- 
pied with  Is,  not  the  exclusion  of  the  super- 
natural,   but    Its    more    perfect    Inclusion,   Its 


58  Evolution  and  Religion. 

better  definition  and  its  harmony  with  the 
natural.  Under  the  earlier  exposition,  they 
displaced  each  other  with  much  conflict  and 
jar  ;  under  the  later  exposition,  they  are  com- 
ing to  glide  into  each  other  along  the  lines 
which  unite  physical  and  spiritual  phenomena. 
What  the  supernaturalist  has  been  contending 
for  from  the  very  beginning  has  been  spiritual 
forces,  though  he  saw  not  how  wisely  to  unite 
them  to  physical  ones.  What  the  naturalist 
contends  against  is  that  method  of  use,  on  the 
part  of  his  opponent,  which  makes  the  super- 
natural an  alien  element,  displacing  and  dis- 
turbing natural  law. 

This  has  been  the  pivot  on  which  the  ever- 
returning  discussion  of  miracles  has  hinged. 
If  every  miracle  as  a  simple  event  were  yielded 
as  lacking  adequate  proof,  the  fundamental 
principles  of  the  spiritual  world  would  remain 
Avhat  they  are.  Nor  can  our  grasp  of  these 
principles  be  truly  satisfactory  and  vital  till  we 
find  them  for  ourselves  in  the  very  familiar 
phenomena  to  which  they  pertain.  When  we 
have  so  secured  them,  we  have  no  longer  any 
need  that  any  one  should  tell  us  of  them,  or  es- 
tablish them  in  any  wonderful  way,  for  we  our- 
selves have  discovered  them  in  their  true  form. 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledg-e.       59 


Miracles,  as  mere  facts,  are  not  worth  the  conten- 
tion they  have  occasioned,  can  in  no  way  make 
good  the  position  which  has  been  assigned  them. 
Nay,  more,  we  may  well  affirm  that  the  denial 
of  them  has  been  none  too  earnest  and  decided, 
looked  on  as  a  means  of  correcting  this  wrong 
relation  to  revelation  which  has  been  assigned 
them.  Men  have  sought  for  a  sign,  and,  hav- 
ing found  what  they  have  deemed  a  sign,  they 
have  diverted  their  attention  from  the  truth  to 
a  relatively  sensuous  pursuit  of  its  symbols. 
They  have  followed  the  star,  but  it  has  not  come 
to  rest  over  the  babe  in  Bethlehem.  What  we 
profoundly  and  constantly  need  is  a  knowledge 
of  the  laws  of  the  spiritual  world,  and  not  some 
meteoric  flash  that  may  seem  for  a  moment  to 
dispel  the  darkness,  but  leaves  us,  in  the  end, 
more  confused  than  ever. 

Are  we,  then,  to  set  down  this  universal  and 
protracted  movement  in  the  thoughts  of  men 
as  fruitless  wandering?  Have  men  merely 
lost  the  path,  and  are  they  now  being  restored 
to  it  ?  We  cannot  answer  these  questions  with 
a  simple  affirmative  in  consistency  with  the 
laws  of  evolution.  Men  as  one  whole  do  not 
lose  their  way,  any  more  than  a  river  misses 
its  channel.      The  path  pursued  may  be  a  tedi- 


6o  Evolution  and  Religion. 

ous  and  circuitous  one  ;  but  it  is  a  certain  one, 
and  there  is  none  other.  The  thing  contended 
for  in  the  miracle,  and  for  the  time  being  won 
for  the  masses  of  men,  was  a  spiritual  presence 
in  the  world.  If,  in  yielding  the  miracle,  we 
should  yield  this  presence,  we  should  suffer 
irretrievable  loss.  The  constructive  law  of 
the  world  is  found  in  that  equilibrium  which 
men  had  in  view  in  affirming  the  supernatural 
as  well  as  the  natural.  The  spirit  cannot 
save  itself  for  its  own  uses  without  saving 
that  which  it  has  held  fast  by  means  of  the 
miracle.  The  spirit  of  man  cannot  win  the 
world  as  a  suitable  medium  of  its  own  powers, 
without  implications  allied  to  those  of  the 
miracle.  If  we  accept  the  miracle  at  once, 
we  are  involved  in  a  hopeless  accumulation 
of  superstitions.  If  we  deny  it  at  once,  on 
scientific  grounds  simply,  we  cut  ourselves  off 
from  the  inner  spiritual  power  of  the  world. 
We  need  as  spiritual  beings  both  the  causes 
and  reasons  which  penetrate  our  lives — both 
the  settled  order  and  the  upward  tendency 
through  that  order.  Thus  only  does  the  world 
refiect  back  upon  us  our  own  lives,  and  nourish, 
as  one  vital  plexus,  our  thoughts,  our  actions, 
and  our  affections.      We  must  hold  fast  to  the 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       6i 

world  as  a  medium  of  divine  life.     This  is  its 
profoundest  rendering. 

What  has  been  accomplished  by  this  discus- 
sion is  a  shifting  of  ground,  not  toward  natural- 
ism as  a  finality,  but  toward  a  more  complete 
recognition  of  both  elements,  and  a  more  ade- 
quate adjustment  of  them  to  each  other.  If 
God  is  immanent  in  the  world,  he  need  in 
no  way  transcend  the  world,  working  it  for- 
ward according  to  his  will.  The  spirit  of  man 
— so  we  believe — rules  in  the  body  of  man,  but 
it  does  it  under  the  general  form  of  physical 
law.  If  the  attack  on  miracles  is  made  to 
mean  that  the  world  is  a  mechanical  world,  one 
of  quantities  and  qualities  adequate  to  a  cer- 
tain work  and  wholly  unable  to  go  beyond  it, 
then  the  spirit  must  confront  it  in  a  struggle 
for  its  own  existence.  There  is  no  obscurity 
of  thought  admissible  here.  We  must  have  a 
vital  world,  a  world  with  a  spiritual  atmosphere, 
or  we  must  be  left  to  perish — vermin  under  an 
exhausted  receiver — in  a  dead  world.  We  can 
no  more  survive  in  a  mechanical  world  than  we 
can  live  in  a  tomb.  All  we  think,  all  we  do, 
all  we  hope,  all  we  fear,  presuppose  a  pliant, 
spiritual  protoplasm  in  which  processes  of  life 
and  death  are  potentially  present. 


62  Evolution  and  Religion. 

We  must  save  the  whole  or  we  cannot  save 
the  parts.  If  God  Is  powerless,  locked  up  in 
the  ruts  of  law,  much  more  are  we  powerless. 
If  we  have  power,  infinitely  more  has  God 
power.  There  is  no  such  lamination  between 
the  physical  and  the  spiritual,  that,  dividing 
them,  we  can  yield  the  one  to  causes,  and  retain 
the  other  for  reasons.  Causes,  passing  an 
invisible  line,  become  reasons  ;  and  reasons, 
returning  by  the  same  path,  reveal  themselves 
as  causes.  It  has  well  been  said  that  If  God 
cannot  Intervene  In  the  physical  world,  no 
more  can  he  In  the  spiritual  world.  He  can- 
not answer  prayer,  though  It  be  directed  to  a 
spiritual  state.  The  spiritual  and  the  physical 
are  too  closely  Interlaced  to  allow  us  to  handle 
either  In  disconnection  from  the  other.  We 
approach  the  physical  through  the  spiritual, 
and  the  spiritual  through  the  physical.  We 
persuade  and  dissuade,  we  sway  each  other  In 
many  ways,  but  we  do  It  by  the  Intervention 
of  physical  media.  To  suppose  that  God  In- 
fluences our  minds  aside  from  their  surround- 
ing Is  a  harsh  supposition,  of  the  same  nature 
as  that  which  condemns  the  miracle.  Like  It, 
it  will  certainly  disappear. 

Freedom    Is   Involved    In    the   very   fact   of 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       63 

thouo-ht.  It  is  the  truth  that  makes  us  free. 
The  mind  and  the  truth  are  in  reciprocal  inter- 
action. The  mind  pursues  the  truth,  the 
truth  renews  for  the  mind  changeable  con- 
ditions of  activity.  The  relation  is  a  free 
one.  No  man  can  enforce  his  opinion  on  any 
other  supposition  than  that  of  a  real,  yet  vari- 
able, affinity  between  thought  and  truth.  But 
if  we  admit  liberty,  we  admit  it  as  a  con- 
structive term  in  the  universe,  physical  and 
spiritual.  With  it  comes  not  simply  the  free- 
dom of  man  with  the  world,  but  the  freedom 
of  man  with  God  and  of  God  with  man.  This, 
the  higher  half  of  liberty,  throbs  with  con- 
structive power.  Our  Lord's  Prayer  is  won- 
derful in  its  recognition  alike  of  the  steadfast 
movement  and  the  incessant  modification. 
The  Kinedom  is  to  come  in  its  own  grand 
way,  we  are  to  have  nourishment,  forgiveness, 
protection  ;  but  it  is  to  be  done  part  by  part, 
day  by  day,  the  presence  of  God  the  supreme 
fact  in  it  all. 

What  evolution  has  done  and  is  doing  is  to 
secure  a  re-adjustment  of  the  natural  and  the 
supernatural  to  each  other,  a  better  conception 
of  both,  and  a  more  perfect  interplay  between 
them.      This    perpetual    re-adjustment    makes 


64  Evolution  and  Religion. 

evolution  true  to  itself.  The  turnlnors  to  the 
right  and  the  turnings  to  the  left  are  the  bend- 
ings  of  the  river,  subject,  from  fountain  to 
mouth,  to  the  same  cosmic  impulse.  We  come 
to  see  that  we  ourselves — as  we  well  may  be 
under  evolution — are  analogo7is  of  the  uni- 
verse ;  that  both  elements,  the  natural  and  the 
supernatural,  the  causal  and  the  free,  are  in  us  ; 
that  they  are  In  systematic,  growing  Interaction, 
and  that  no  miracle  is  involved  simply  because 
a  constructive  method  orlves  no  occasion  for  It. 
This  discussion  of  miracles  is  only  one  phase 
of  the  equally  persistent  and  Illusive  discussion 
of  human  freedom. 

It  follows  from  the  doctrine  of  development, 
as  applied  to  man's  religious  nature,  that  no 
phase  of  belief  Is  In  any  sense  absolute.  No 
generation  submits  itself,  In  matters  of  faith, 
to  any  previous  generation,  nor  Is  Itself  a  law 
to  any  subsequent  one.  The  spiritual  concep- 
tions at  any  moment  current  are  in  harmony 
with  the  renderings  of  the  facts  of  the  world 
with  which  they  are  associated.  As  these 
change,  those  must  change  with  them.  The 
two  together  make  a  coherent,  Intellectual 
whole.  The  external  facts  and  the  Internal 
interpretations    of    our    lives    are   reciprocally 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       65 

causes  and  effects,  as  much  so  as  are  physical 
surroundings  and  vital  powers.  We  are  no 
more  wise  in  putting  on  earlier  forms  of  faith 
our  more  subtile  spiritual  Impressions  than  we 
are  In  submitting  these,  our  more  expansive 
thoughts,  to  their  rendering  of  the  facts.  The 
question  thus  becomes,  in  reference  to  the 
earlier  church  and  miracles,  not  what  part  do 
miracles  now  play  In  our  belief,  but  what  part 
did  they  then  play  In  the  powerful  spiritual 
life  then  present  ?  The  followers  of  Christ 
Interpreted  current  events  under  the  formulae 
familiar  to  them  ;  and  what  we  are  perfectly 
sure  of  Is,  that  this  rendering  was  a  highly 
vital  process  with  them.  The  old,  In  Its  time 
and  way,  was  as  Instructive  and  progressive  as 
the  new,  In  Its  time  and  way. 

If  we  take  such  an  event  as  the  resurrection 
of  Christ,  It  Is  Impossible  to  believe  that  the 
disciples,  confounded  and  spiritually  over- 
thrown as  they  were  by  the  crucifixion,  rallied 
on  a  purely  spiritual  basis,  saw  that  Christ  re- 
mained in  the  highest  possible  sense  the  way, 
the  truth,  and  the  life,  and  yet  were  led  to  sus- 
tain their  position  so  achieved,  with  what  would 
then  have  been  the  legendary  trumpery  of  the 
resurrection.     Our  theological  growth  carries 


66  Evolution  and  Religion. 

with  it  our  theological  sentiments.  We  are  re- 
pugnant to  miracles  because  miracles  are  re- 
pugnant to  our  conceptions.  With  the  earlier 
Christians,  spiritual  Insight  and  a  marvellous 
rendering  of  events  were  one  and  the  same 
thing.  They  construed  the  world,  and  the 
world  Instructed  them,  as  Indicated  In  the  Gos- 
pels. That  experience  of  miracles  which  we 
so  sharply  criticise  has  undeniably  been  a  most 
salutary  and  wholesome  training  to  many  per- 
sons In  spiritual  life,  an  Inseparable  constitu- 
ent in  a  truly  vital  movement. 

The  question  then  assumes  this  form.  Is  It 
probable  that  a  perfectly  practical,  searching, 
and  sober  faith — such  as  was  that  of  the  earlier 
Christians — was  Interwoven  with  a  concep- 
tion of  facts  which  was  fanciful  and  fictitious 
throughout  ?  Are  the  actual  and  the  spiritual 
in  this  way  divorced  from  each  other?  If  so, 
what  becomes  of  our  notion  of  evolution  ?  In 
place  of  it,  we  are,  under  our  own  standards, 
affirmine  an  absolute  character  in  thlno^s  and 
thoughts.  A  Gospel  so  elastic  as  to  be  just 
entering,  In  our  time,  on  its  true  government 
is  deeply  Involved  In  an  entire  misconstruction 
of  the  world.  It  is  not,  on  this  supposition, 
with  a  partial  rendering,  but  with  a  mlsrender- 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.      67 

ing.  that  we  have  to  do.  Does  the  physical 
world  lie,  in  reference  to  the  spiritual  world 
that  is  growing  upon  it  and  expanding  over  it, 
in  this  eternally  dead  and  irresponsive  attitude  ? 
Our  theism — for  this  discussion  presupposes 
theism — must  lead  us  more  and  more  into  a 
Divine  Personal  Presence  ;  must  make  worship, 
prayer,  trust,  rest,  the  inevitable  outcome  of 
our  lives.  If  the  world  is  for  us  increasingly 
vitalized  by  the  omnipresence  of  God,  can  we 
reject,  in  a  dogmatic,  final  way,  those  very  con- 
ceptions by  which  the  race  has  climbed  into 
this  belief  ?  A  belief  in  miracles,  as  an  ex- 
pression of  a  Divine  Presence,  came  nearer  to 
our  present  faith  than  would  have  been  a  re- 
jection of  miracles  in  behalf  of  a  framework 
of  things  impenetrable  to  the  Divine  Mind. 
We  must  explain  each  successive  phase  of  life 
by  its  own  inner  forces,  and  by  the  lines  of 
succession  in  which  it  lies.  It  is  not  by  any 
perfection  of  parts  at  any  one  time  that  we  in- 
terpret the  world  under  the  notion  of  evolution, 
but  by  its  coherence  in  a  changeable,  forward 
movement.  If  we  admit  the  world  to  be  both 
physical  and  spiritual  in  a  thoroughly  inter- 
penetrative way,  then  the  interplay  of  the  two 
on  each  other  and  under  each  other  will  alter 


68  Evolution  and  Religion. 

with  successive  stages  of  development.  Neither 
is  complete  in  reference  to  the  other.  The  two 
are  passing  into  a  harmony  ever  deeper,  more 
restful,  more  masterful.  The  first  condition  of 
spirituality  is  that  we  do  not  suffer  the  physi- 
cal to  overpower  the  intellectual,  that  we  allow 
the  intellectual  to  find  its  way  ever  more  com- 
pletely into  the  physical.  We  cannot  start  this 
movement  by  a  flat  denial  of  its  first  steps. 

We  have  referred  to  the  constant  separation 
in  thought  of  physical  and  intellectual  elements, 
and  the  passionate  pursuit  of  one  or  another 
type  of  monism,  in  a  vain  hope  of  identifying 
the  two.  This  tendency  repeats  itself  in  a  great 
variety  of  ways,  calling  out  some  new  phase  of 
strife  between  the  form  and  the  inner  force  of 
things.  Pleasing  manners  are  separated  from 
pfood-will  with  more  or  less  friction  between 
them.  Style  in  composition  is  cultivated  some- 
what aside  from  the  idea  to  be  conveyed. 
Realism  in  the  novel  is  made  to  take  the  place 
of  a  disclosure  of  the  spiritually  constructive 
forces  in  life.  Rhythm  in  the  poem  is  sought 
with  no  close  afifiliation  of  sentiment.  Auorust 
religious  ceremonial  is  made  a  primary  expres- 
sion of  the  religious  life.  The  deepest  form 
of  this  division  is  present  in  putting  sequence 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       69 

in  place  of  causation  ;  the  phenomena  of  life 
for  life  itself ;  an  associative  order  in  men's 
thoughts  for  the  power  of  thought ;  and  the 
exterior  inductions  of  experience,  in  them- 
selves half  instinctive,  for  the  inner  revelation  of 
reason. 

So  universal  and  persistent  a  disposition  on 
the  part  of  the  two  constituents  of  truth  to 
break  the  bonds  of  affinity,  and  let  the  mind 
fall  back  on  a  more  elementary  experience,  is 
very  significant,  both  as  a  fact  and  in  the  in- 
evitable correction  which  comes  to  it.  Evolu- 
tion brings  light  at  this  point.  This  separation 
takes  place  between  sensuous  and  spiritual  im- 
pressions, the  familiar  external  form  and  the 
less  familiar  internal  force,  because  this  is  the 
transition  we  are  now  making  in  growth.  The 
sensuous  life,  with  difficult  gestation,  is  pass- 
ing into  the  spiritual  life.  The  two  elements 
are  achieving  a  permanent  organic  fellowship 
under  the  ever-growing  power  of  the  superior 
tendency.  One  might  liken  the  transition  to 
the  chemical  unions  constantly  formed,  and  as 
constantly  lost  again,  under  the  fierce  heat 
which  attended  on  the  earlier  construction  of 
the  globe.  We  see  also  why  the  thoughts  are 
quickly  brought  back  to  the  inner  element,  as 


^o  Evolution  and  Religion. 

an  essential  term  of  comprehension,  no  matter 
in  how  many  ways  they  wander  from  It.  This  Is 
the  barrier  to  be  cleared  ;  and  the  mind,  like  a 
restive  steed.  Is  restored  to  It  with  a  short  turn. 
Evolution  not  only  discloses  a  reason  for 
this  persistent  conflict  In  knowledge,  It  corrects 
it.  Our  conclusions  are  found  to  be  superficial 
and  unsatisfactory  unless  they  are  made  to 
recognize  this  growing  spiritual  force.  The 
soil  of  physical  facts  must  show  Its  fertility  by 
becoming  the  seed-bed  of  rare  Intellectual  life 
or  we  soon  lose  even  Its  lower  uses.  Know- 
ledge, and  the  higher  service  of  knowledge  can- 
not, for  any  considerable  period,  be  separated 
from  each  other.  This  fact  arises  from  the 
truly  organic  character  of  the  mind.  Its  affec- 
tions must  have  concurrent  expression  In  ac- 
tion with  Its  thoughts,  or  both  lose  Impulse. 
A  few  may  push  Inquiry  or  speculation  very 
far,  and  find  a  sufficient  motive  In  the  pleasure 
of  unexpended  powers.  But  this  activity  ex- 
hausts Itself  unless  the  ground  In  the  rear 
comes  to  be  spread  over  and  occupied  by  men  ; 
unless  some  strong  reaction  on  the  human 
heart  sets  In,  giving  life  a  permanent  footing 
in  the  new  field.  No  disproportionate  devel- 
opment can  sustain   Itself.     Emigration  must 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       71 

follow  exploration,  or  the  lessons  of  explora- 
tion are  soon  lost.  Knowledge  must  pass  over 
into  the  uses  of  knowledge,  and  these  uses 
must  be  adequate,  or  knowledge  itself  soon 
becomes  sterile. 

This  is  still  move  evident  when  we  take  into 
consideration  the  masses  of  men.     They  at  no 
time  interest  themselves  in  intellectual  activi- 
ties which  return  no  harvests  to  the  common 
storehouses.     The  reason  why  philosophy  be- 
came a  by-word  was  chiefly  this  separation  of 
speculative    and    practical    interests.      Bacon 
brought  forward  the  test   of   "fruits"  as  the 
voice  of  men  at  large.     Science  has  had  new 
interests  and  rewarding  inquiries  assigned  it  m 
exhaustless  succession  because  of  the  produc- 
tive powers  it  has  developed.      But  the  most 
comprehensive  uses  of   knowledge  are  social, 
spiritual  ones — uses  which  centre  the  soul  of 
man  within  itself  and  give  it  restfulness — uses 
which   awaken   a  genial   spirit   between   men, 
build  them  together  about   a  common  social 
purpose,  and   make  of    them  a  kingdom.      If 
knowledge  fails  us  in  any  one  of  these  uses,  as 
we  in  due  order  catch  sight  of  them,  we  shall 
turn  in  all  directions  till  the  error  is  corrected, 
the  way  once  more  found. 


72  Evolution  and  Religion. 

Though  empirical  inquiry  has  gained  aston- 
ishing prevalence  by  falling  on  a  large  pro- 
ductive service,  it  cannot,  any  more  than 
speculation,  sustain  itself  indefinitely  without 
meeting  in  due  order  the  demands  of  the  so- 
cial world.  Spiritual  life  is  the  final  test,  sim- 
ply because  it  is  the  completion  of  the  organic 
circuit.  This  conception  of  life,  evolution  con- 
firms ;  and  this  problem  of  life,  evolution 
comes  in  to  solve.  We  are  building  up  very 
slowly,  it  is  true,  but  with  corresponding  depth 
and  breadth,  a  higher  social  state.  In  this  and 
by  this  all  our  powers  will  be  renewed  in  di- 
rection and  widened  in  purpose.  The  sub- 
stance and  force  of  knowledge  will  become 
increasingly  inseparable.  The  sensuous  will 
have  lost  its  too  tenacious  hold  on  us,  and  the 
spiritual  will  have  confirmed  itself  in  an  expe- 
rience as  definite  and  enjoyable  as  that  now 
associated  with  physical  impulses.  The  two, 
by  an  organic  interlock,  will  reveal  their  entire 
unity.  The  highest  uses  of  knowledge  will 
disclose  to  us  more  of  the  nature  of  know- 
ledge, and  we  shall  understand  that  vital  force 
in  the  divine  movement  which  is  bringing  to- 
gether these  two  terms  of  a  perfected  life. 
What  we  may  call  the  movement  of  evolution 


Evolution  Unifies  Knowledge.       73 

is  also  the  movement  of  reason,  and  the  sense 
of  powers  increasingly  rewardful  in  their  ac- 
tivity. 

The  world  is  thus  laid  open  to  us  as  a  dy- 
namic, living,  spiritual  product.  The  reality, 
the  sensuality,  of  a  physical  world,  are  made 
to  underlie  the  visions  and  evanescent  aspira- 
tions of  a  spiritual  one.  The  expansive  power 
of  a  spiritual  world  enters  the  inertia  and 
grossness  of  a  physical  one.  The  spirit  is 
clothed,  and  clothed  in  a  garment  suited  to  its 
own  regal  nature.  The  divisions  and  the  di- 
versities of  knowledge  disappear  under  this 
movement,  and  its  unity  is  found  where  alone 
unity  can  be  found — in  a  marvellous  reconcilia- 
tion of  things  far  apart  and  near  together. 
Truth  and  falsehood,  holiness  and  sin,  happi- 
ness and  suffering,  are  brought  to  light  and 
eliminated  in  one  and  the  same  struggle. 
They  are  not  alien  ingredients  accidentally 
commingled,  but  the  reason  of  each  is  contained 
in  the  other.  The  universe  is  an  evolution,  a 
travailing  in  pain,  with  this  burden  of  life  at 
its  heart. 


PART    III. 

EVOLUTION    IN    ITS   PRESENT    SPIRITUAL    PHASES. 


75 


In  the  stoical  period  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the  positive  religion 
had  come  to  be  regarded  as  merely  an  art  for  obtaining  preternatural 
assistance  in  the  affairs  of  life,  and  the  moral  amelioration  of  mankind 
was  deemed  altogether  external  to  its  sphere. 

On  the  one  hand,  we  find  a  system  of  Ethics,  of  which,  when  we 
consider  the  range  and  beauty  of  its  precepts,  the  sublimity  of  the 
motives  to  which  it  appealed,  and  its  perfect  freedom  from  supersti- 
tious elements,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  that  though  it  may  have 
been  equalled,  it  has  never  been  surpassed.  On  the  other  hand,  we 
find  a  society  almost  absolutely  destitute  of  moralizing  institutions, 
occupations,  or  beliefs,  existing  under  an  economical  and  political  sys- 
tem, which  inevitably  led  to  general  depravity,  and  passionately  ad- 
dicted to  the  most  brutalizing  amusements. — WiLLIAM  G.  H.  Lecky, 
History  of  European  Morals. 


77 


PART    III. 

EVOLUTION    IN    ITS    PRESENT    SPIRITUAL    PHASES. 


EVOLUTION  Implies  a  movement  per- 
fectly coherent  in  every  portion  of  It. 
It  Is  one,  therefore,  which  can  be  traced 
In  all  Its  parts  by  the  mind — one  In  which  we, 
as  Intelligent  agents,  are  partakers,  first,  as 
diligently  Inquiring  Into  It ;  second,  as  concur- 
rently active  under  It  ;  and,  third,  as  In  no 
inconsiderable  degree  modifying  Its  results. 
This  our  shaping  power  is  disclosed,  as  a  sin- 
gle example,  in  the  many  varieties  of  plants 
and  animals  which  are  the  products  of  man's 
Intervention.  Evolution  descends  to  the  mi- 
nutest particulars,  and  no  sensible  gain  Is  out  of 
relation  to  all  that  has  eone  before.  Evolu- 
tion,  therefore,  is  most  directly  opposed  to 
that  form  of  the  creative  Idea  which  man  de- 
rives from  his  own  mechanical  work,  and  then 
transfers  to  the  divine  work.     To  the  posslbil- 

79 


So  Evolution  and  Religion. 

Ity  of  Immediate  construction,  he  adds  the  no- 
tion of  Infinite  power,  and  so  is  at  a  loss  to 
understand  why  the  world,  on  its  physical  and 
on  Its  spiritual  side,  is  not  made  at  once  to 
respond  to  the  divine  wisdom  and  the  divine 
grace.  This  mystery  remains  Insoluble  as  long 
as  the  creative  Idea  expressed  In  the  words, 
*'  Let  there  be  light  and  there  was  light,"  is  kept 
In  the  foreground.  Under  this  conception 
man's  chief  spiritual  function  Is  that  of  prayer, 
his  chief  grace  that  of  patience,  and  his  chief 
hope  that  of  divine  Intervention.  The  changes 
of  the  world  are  to  be  great,  convulsive  ;  to 
extend  from  above  downward,  and  to  Issue  in 
a  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth. 

The  mental  and  spiritual  discipline  of  these 
two  Ideas — that  of  a  slow,  constant,  and  per- 
fectly coherent  growth  ;  and  that  of  sudden  and 
unforeseen  Intervention,  a  thief  In  the  night — 
is  very  different.  The  transition  from  the  one 
to  the  other  Is  a  difficult  and  painful  one  :  yet 
It  Is  plainly  a  passage  from  a  lower  to  a  higher 
conception  ;  from  waiting  on  God  to  working 
with  him ;  from  a  relatively  blind  dependence 
on  Inexplicable  providences  to  a  perfectly 
rational  co-operation  with  a  wise  and  compre- 
hensive method  ;  from  a  confused  jumbling  of 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.       8i 

causes  and  reasons  in  one  tangled  skein  to  a 
careful  extension  of  them,  like  a  net  spread 
out,  till  they  cover  the  entire  field  of  thought 
and  action.  Like  the  spider  at  the  centre  of 
its  web,  the  mind  moves  freely  in  all  direc- 
tions, and  from  all  receives  every  intimation 
of  opportunity. 

We  cannot  fall  to  see  how  ennobling  is  this 
conception  of  the  world  which  makes  It  the 
true  habitat  of  human  reason,  which  opens  It 
out  before  the  mind  of  man  to  Its  utmost  cir- 
cumference, which  fills  It  everywhere  with 
lleht.  Nor  can  we  fail  to  feel  that  the  world 
thus  becomes  the  true  arena  of  spiritual  life, 
and  must  ultimately  call  out  and  reward  every 
affection.  It  commences  with  the  constructive 
activities  of  the  mind  Itself.  It  awakens  It 
thoroughly  In  its  highest  rational  powers.  It 
puts,  and  that  Increasingly,  all  other  powers 
under  Its  control.  It  makes  a  correspondingly 
luxuriant  emotional  life  come  forth  from,  and 
rest  back  upon,  this  Integrity  of  the  spirit.  As 
in  the  body  the  most  pervasive  and  permanent 
pleasures  are  associated  with  the  most  perfect 
health,  so  In  the  mind  the  most  stable  and  pro- 
portionate affections  are  connected  with  the 
larorest  outlook  of  reason. 

o 

6 


82  Evolution  and  Religion. 

Yet  these  two  conceptions  of  the  world  do 
not  grow  independently  of  each  other.  They 
each  have  a  false  form,  and  each  brings  cor- 
rection  to  the  other.  The  first  idea  springs 
from  magnifying  personal  power,  and  at  the 
same  time  robbing  it  of  its  own  proper  law ; 
narrowing  it  in  its  resources  and  cutting  it 
off  from  any  extended  action  and  reaction  with 
the  world  which  expresses  its  work.  The  mind 
first  wakes  up  to  itself  as  a  productive  agent,  car- 
ries the  notion  over  to  God,  and  there  gives  it 
an  expression  so  positive  as  to  make  it  in  the 
last  degree  arbitrary, destructive  of  all  the  ways 
of  wisdom  which  have  revealed  it,  and  must 
still  reveal  it.  The  world,  on  which  so  much  has 
been  expended,  is  gathered  back  into  the  hand  of 
God  to  be  hurledforth  In  some  new  direction  and 
in  some  new  way.  Thus  the  child  retains  by  a 
string  the  ball  It  plays  with.  Nothing  Is  Impossi- 
ble with  God.  We  render  these  words  as  equiv- 
alent to,  "  All  things  are  open  to  him  ;  nothing 
has  been  done  once  for  all ;  everything  may  be 
done  on  the  Instant."  We  do  not  see  that  w^e 
thereby  annihilate  the  creative  Idea,  and  suffer 
each  successive  bubble  to  collapse  on  Its  own 
centre. 

The  initiatory  Idea  for  man  Is  this  feeling  of 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.       83 

power  and  purpose  in  the  world,  but  it  must 
be  immediately  followed  by  a  sense  of  inner 
law  and  limitation.  This  notion  of  personal, 
rational  power — which  is  none  the  less  the 
root  idea,  the  source  of  all  inquiry — first  offers 
itself  in  an  extravagant  and  contradictory  form. 
Man,  from  his  own  power  of  mechanical  con- 
struction,— to  which  he  attaches  unreasonable 
importance — arrives  at  a  theory  of  the  world 
which  goes  far  to  overshadow  and  make  void 
this  very  notion  of  personal  liberty.  God  is 
made  to  possess  the  same  liberty  in  so  full  and 
unrestrained  a  form  as  to  leave  no  room  for 
the  liberty  of  man.  The  notion  of  liberty  is 
left  so  crude  that  it  can  co-exist  with  no  other 
notion,  and  only  in  one  person  at  a  time.  The 
decrees  of  God  are  minute,  unyielding,  and 
concede  nothing  to  the  devices  of  men.  One 
of  the  most  painful  chapters  in  human  experi- 
ence has  been  the  struggle  of  man  to  reconcile 
his  own  liberty  with  the  liberty  of  God.  Lib- 
erty, power,  going  forth  from  its  chief  centre, 
has  immediately  obliterated  all  cross-lines,  or 
reduced  them  to  shadowy  traces  which  express 
no  orenuine  control.  This  most  uncomfortable 
contradiction  between  the  power  of  God  and 
the  liberty  of  man,  between  the  strength  and 


84  Evolution  and  Religion. 

scope  of  the  moral  government  of  the  world 
and  the  impotency  of  those  subject  to  it,  be- 
tween a  theory  which  left  no  room  for  freedom 
and  a  stolid  assertion  of  freedom  as  the  initia- 
tory idea  of  the  entire  theological  system,  has 
been,  as  in  the  striking  example  of  Jonathan 
Edwards,  the  lurid  and  dramatic  force  of  a 
religious  life  struggling  after  peace  and  right- 
eousness, with  no  peace  or  righteousness  in  its 
own  thought  of  God.  The  spiritual  life  has 
become,  under  this  faith,  irreconcilable  with 
itself  ;  not  a  normal  growth  to  be  corrected 
and  enlarged  throug^h  the  conditions  which 
surround  it,  but  a  blind  struggle  of  vital  im- 
pulses with  themselves,  waiting  for  some  more 
happy  moment — the  fever  passing  by — rin  which 
to  clear  themselves.  The  total  miscarriage  of 
this  religious  philosophy  is  seen  in  the  long, 
dismal,  yet  most  instructive  history  of  asceti- 
cism, in  which  squalor,  maceration,  and  an  an- 
archy of  bewildered  feeling,  took  the  place  of 
the  pleasure  and  sunlight  of  God's  love. 

The  problem  of  growth  is  always  how  to 
achieve  a  positive  advance,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  make  it  a  true  unfolding  of  present 
resources.  The  problem  of  spiritual  growth 
is   how   to    raise  man  above  the   world,   and 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.       85 

yet  to  put  him  In  ever  more  fortunate  posses- 
sion of  it.  The  expansion  of  the  branches 
of  a  tree  is  accompanied  by  a  corresponding 
extension  of  its  roots  downward,  and  the  two 
movements  measure  each  other.  The  spiritual 
life  is  simply  a  higher  and  wider  range  of 
motives  brought  into  the  entire  life.  It  can 
no  more  be  perfected  without  an  unfolding  of 
all  the  forces  subject  to  it  than  these  forces 
can  take  on  their  own  true  harmony  aside 
from  its  reconciling  guidance. 

It  is  a  great  thing  that  men  should  conceive 
the  possibility  of  a  better  life,  and  should 
state  the  problem  to  themselves,  no  matter 
in  how  inadequate  a  form  and  with  what  mis- 
conceptions of  method.  This  vision  is  the 
promise  of  all  that  follows.  The  conception 
of  that  which  is  higher,  holier,  comes  to  men 
almost  exclusively  in  the  region  of  religious 
faith  ;  and  that  faith,  in  its  manifold  failures, 
has  yet  ushered  into  the  thoughts  of  men 
this  aspiration  for  a  fuller  possession  of  them- 
selves. This  sense  of  the  need  of  progress 
must  precede  any  Inquiry  Into  Its  conditions. 
The  soul  thus  germinates  within  itself,  and 
puts  forth  towards  a  spiritual  world.  This  Is 
the  religious  history  of  man.     We  have  not 


86  Evolution  and  Religion. 

understood  it,  because  we  have  not  appre- 
hended its  essential  identity  in  its  several 
phases  ;  we  have  accepted  only  one  or  another 
of  them  as  truly  significant,  and  have  regarded 
these  favored  faiths  as  possessed  of  an  absolute 
authority  which  quite  separated  them  from  the 
general  history  of  the  world. 

The  existing  confusion  of  the  religious 
world  is  corrected  only  by  the  idea  of  evolu- 
tion, a  slow  finding  of  light  by  many  minds 
in  many  directions,  a  steady  development 
under  the  lig^ht  of  the  common  life,  making: 
still  higher  knowledge  possible.  This  con- 
clusion is  on  the  very  face  of  the  facts.  A 
hundred  forms  of  faith,  each  affirming  superi- 
ority in  an  absolute  way,  disprove  one  another. 
It  is  in  the  highest  degree  improbable  that 
the  authority  of  any  one  is  what  its  disciples 
regard  it  to  be  ;  and  improbable,  though  not 
in  the  same  degree,  that  any  one  of  them  is 
wholly  without  value.  The  confusion  is  like 
that  which  attends  on  many  conflicting  ac- 
counts of  one  transaction.  The  proof  of  the 
correctness  of  any  one  of  them  disappears, 
and  it  becomes  probable  that  they  have  all 
grown  up  about  some  separate  features  in 
the    event    itself.       The    event    is    not    dis- 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.       ^7 

credited,  the  reverse  rather,  but  the  specific 
renderings  of  it  lose  authority.  In  the  case 
of  religious  beliefs,  this  absolute  assurance 
arises  more  frequently  from  the  part  assigned 
revelation  ;  but,  as  revelation  is  claimed  under 
so  many  conflicting  forms,  the  claim  itself 
comes  under  the  general  doubt  and  disturb- 
ance. 

This  estimate  of  the  value  of  every  faith, 
and  of  the  partial  value  of  any  faith,  is  con- 
firmed when  we  turn  to  the  possibilities  of 
correct  apprehension  which  belong  to  the 
human  mind.  Anything  like  absolute  and 
complete  truth  is  impossible  to  it  on  any  com- 
prehensive subject.  Truth  means  a  corre- 
spondence of  men's  thoughts  with  the  real 
quality  of  that  to  which  they  pertain.  There 
can  be  no  such  correspondence  in  the  spiritual 
world,  incident  to  the  very  primary  and 
obscure  experiences  which  belong  to  men  in 
this  field.  To  af^rm  infallibility  in  dogma 
is  to  affirm  infallibility  in  the  mind  which 
entertains  it,  and  that  af^rmation  is  in  entire 
oversight  of  the  intellectual  and  moral  con- 
ditions of  the  lives  of  men. 

Truth  is  a  slow   development   as    certainly 
as  is  righteousness,  and  their  unfoldings  keep 


8S 


Evolution  and  Religion. 


step  with  each  other.  Virtue  is  the  hold  of 
the  feelings  on  the  spiritual  world,  and  truth 
is  the  hold  of  the  thoughts  on  it.  Neither 
hold  can  be  fully  attained  without  the  othen 
Action  is  the  medium  of  both,  is  the  loom 
in  which  the  web  of  experience  is  woven,  its 
parts  slowly  bound  together.  The  claim  of 
any  adequate  and  unmistakable  truth  in  the 
spiritual  world  is  a  claim  to  complete  holiness 
in  the  same  direction.  Accept  evolution, 
which  lies  on  the  surface  of  the  religious 
history  of  the  world,  and  the  perplexities  of 
our  many  and  perplexed  forms  of  faith  dis- 
appear. By  error  and  by  truth,  by  vice  and 
by  virtue,  men  have  been  corrected,  and 
guided  into  a  higher  life.  Only  as  that  life 
becomes  their  universal  experience,  and  so 
attains  its  true  dimensions,  can  it  be  com- 
pletely apprehended  in  thought,  feeling,  ac- 
tion. The  religious  life  is  pre-eminently  a 
social  life, — a  life  of  the  affections — and  for 
that  reason  spiritual  revelation  must  gather 
in  and  interpret  every  scrap  of  human  ex- 
perience. 

Under  the  evolutionary  rendering  of  our 
religious  growth,  scepticism  and  agnosticism 
play  a  part  by  no  means  unimportant.     Seep- 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.       89 

ticism,  though  it  may  not  well  understand  its 
own  office,  and  may  often  go  beyond  it,  sim- 
ply compels  inquiry  to  ever  renew  and  enlarge 
itself.  It  is  the  decomposition  which  accom- 
panies recomposition  in  growth.  It  is  giving 
ground  by  that  which  is  less  fit  in  the  presence 
of  that  which  is  more  fit.  It  is  the  aggressive 
force  of  the  mind,  by  which  it  breaks  through 
error  and  renews  effort. 

Agnosticism,  though  less  frequently  appli- 
cable, serves,  in  the  mining  of  the  veins  of 
knowledge,  to  close  up  dangerous  shafts,  to- 
wall  in  drifts  that  have  proved  unproductive. 
It  is  a  most  important  preliminary  to  well- 
directed  inquiry  to  understand  what  we  can 
know,  and  what  we  can  not  know ;  what,  from 
its  very  nature,  is  purely  speculative,  and  what 
can  yield  us  practical  guidance.  It  is  only 
absolute  agnosticism, — a  distrust  of  the  know- 
ing process,  a  putting  in  its  place  of  sensuous 
impressions — that  is  of  the  nature  of  paraly- 
sis. If  we  cannot  travel  beyond  our  senses 
above  the  world,  we  cannot  travel  beyond 
them  in  the  world.  The  two  movements  are 
essentially  one.  Both  proceed  by  the  same 
clews  of  thought.  When  we  affirm  that  the 
thinor   which    is,    has  been  and  shall    be, — an 


90  Evolution  and  Religion. 

assertion  at  the  basis  of  all  induction — we  are 
stepping  out  firmly  on  a  mental  conviction. 
We  are  planting  ourselves  squarely  on  a  first 
premise  of  thought,  the  rational  coherence  of 
thinofs.  We  do  nothlngr  more  than  this  when 
we  pass  from  the  physical  to  the  spiritual. 
The  physical  contains  for  us  spiritual  ele- 
ments, is  full  of  suggestions  and  Implications. 
We  may  well  lay  hold  of  them,  and  give  them 
free  expression.  If  we  do  this  Inadequately 
or  inaccurately,  we  have  still  obeyed  the  high- 
est bent  of  mind,  and  strengthened  it.  The 
mind  never  can  deny  Itself  this  outward  move- 
ment into  the  unknown.  It  Is  of  Its  very  sub- 
stance. Every  Inference  projects  the  mind 
beyond  Its  sensuous  perceptions.  This  Is  that 
which  we  know  as  Intellectual  power.  In 
induction  the  examples  sensuously  present 
with  us  are  as  nothing,  as  compared  with  those 
embraced  In  the  sweep  of  the  law  thereby 
established.  Our  various  forms  of  reasoning 
differ  from  each  other  In  the  breadth  and 
security  of  our  premises,  but  not  In  the  meth- 
ods by  which  we  transcend  them.  The  mind 
Is  one  and  the  same  plexus  of  powers,  whether 
spreading  out  over  sensuous  or  supersensuous 
phenomena ;  whether  enclosing.  In  the  sweep 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.       91 

of  its  thought,  things,  or  persons,  or  divine 
methods.  In  these  exertions,  one  and  all,  it 
is  understanding  the  world. 

The  deepest  thing  involved  in  this  swaying 
of  the  mind  backward  and  forward  is  liberty. 
The  true  disclosure  is  that  of  a  power  of  its 
own  order,  springing  up  within  itself,  under  its 
own  law.     The  knowledge  of  the  world  and 
the  mastery  of  the  world  mean  this.     Sponta- 
neity in  mind  is  as  much  the  ruling  conception 
in  intellectual   action  as  is  the  plastic  power 
of  life  in  organic  products.     There  is  in  each 
living    thing    a    combination    of    phenomena, 
which,  in  their  relation  to  each  other,  we  can 
interpret  in  no  other  way  than  by  this  notion 
of  life.     The    inference    is    universal    and   un- 
avoidable.    In   like    manner,   the    phenomena 
of  knowledge   involve    reason,    guiding    itself 
from    within    itself    to    its    own    conclusions. 
Without    this    supposition,    these   phenomena 
escape  in  air  like  a  volatile  fluid.     To  get  this 
conclusion,   hold  it  fast,  and  learn  its  limita- 
tions,    is    the   work    of    a   long    evolutionary 
process. 

If  we  allow  the  notion  of  personal  power  to 
pass,  on  the  side  of  religious  belief,  into  the 
doctrine  of  decrees,  or,  on  the  side  of  physical 


92  Evolution  and  Religion. 

inquiry,  into  universal  causation, — the  fatalism 
of  forces  hidden  in  things — the  universe  be- 
comes unintelligible  to  us,  and  unmanageable 
by  us.  Our  daily  experience,  and  the  language 
in  which  we  are  accustomed  to  render  it,  are 
made  contradictory  to  each  other.  The  intel- 
lectual heavens  we  spread  over  our  physical 
conditions  has  in  it  no  vitality,  sets  up  with 
them  no  actions  and  reactions,  brings  to  us  no 
incentives,  and  yields  no  fresh  limitations.  It  is 
a  painted  sky  spread  over  a  painted  landscape. 

Liberty,  as  personal  life,  is  an  inevitable 
assumption.  It  matters  nothing  that  we  find 
so  much  difficulty  in  its  reconciliation  with  a 
divine  government,  or  with  the  movement  of 
the  world.  Liberty  still  remains  the  solvent 
of  all  intellectual  activity.  A  man  may  refuse 
to  recognize  this  inner  law  of  rational  life  ;  he 
may  leave  the  stream  of  human  experience 
and  sit  upon  the  bank ;  but  he  cannot  explain 
how  he  has  gotten  thus  far  save  by  a  renewed 
recognition  of  the  sufficiency  of  reason  unto 
itself ;  nor  can  he,  on  any  other  terms,  go  any 
farther. 

What  has  evolution  to  do  with  this  perpetual 
paradox  of  life  which  is  equally  involved  in 
science  and  religion — this  point  of  contact  be- 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.       93 

tween  causes  and  reasons,  between  physical  and 
spiritual  movements  ?  In  the  first  place,  it  ac- 
cepts in  the  most  undeniable  way  the  fact  of 
contact,  the  presence  of  two  irreducible  terms 
equally  essential  to  our  knowledge.  We  will 
not  return  to  our  initiatory  assertion  of  innumer- 
able increments  and  omnipresent  guidance,  we 
simply  draw  attention  to  the  many  and  marvel- 
lous ways  in  which  man  shapes  to  his  own  uses 
the  lives  with  which  his  life  Is  associated. 
Flowers,  fruits;  plants,  trees;  animals,  great 
and  small,— are  tractable  In  his  hand,  and  take 
on  new  forms  at  his  bidding.  He,  of  his  own 
impulse,  for  his  own  ends,  gives  new  conditions 
to  vital  forces  ;  and  they  respond  with  marvel- 
lous quickness  In  new  products,  fitted  to  his 
physical  service  and  to  his  Intellectual  tastes. 

If  there  were  an  undeniable  miracle  which 
we  could  repeat  as  often  as  we  chose.  It  could 
give  no  more  proof  of  a  supernatural  presence 
than  do  these  facts,  which  we  renew  at  our 
pleasure,  of  man's  true  power  over  nature. 
The  conclusion  is  involved  in  a  universal  and 
ever-growing  experience.  It  Is  the  one  fact 
which  we  all  love,  in  moments  of  philosophical 
acquiescence,  to  magnify — man's  victories  over 
the  world. 


94  Evolution  and  Religion. 

Not  only  does  evolution  include  these  grow- 
ing instances  of  man's  potency,  it  allows  the 
theoretical  difficulties  in  the  doctrine  of  liberty 
to  fall  into  the  background,  where  they  keep 
company  with  a  thousand  things  equally  incon- 
ceivable with  themselves.  Evolution  yields 
coherent  phenomena,  but  leaves  the  ultimate 
grounds  and  terms  of  order  to  reason  alone. 
It  exposes  no  forces,  it  uncovers  no  causes,  it 
declares  no  relations,  it  reveals  no  powers  :  it 
simply  renders  the  sensuous  terms  of  experi- 
ence, and  remits  to  the  intellect  of  man  their 
rational  interpretation.  It  distinctly  articulates 
its  words,  and  requires  us  to  understand  them. 
He  that  hath  ears  to  hear,  let  him  hear.  We 
are  therefore  in  no  way  bound  over  to  physi- 
cal forces  alone.  We  are  left  to  render  ra- 
tional phenomena  under  rational  terms  as  freely 
as  material  phenomena  under  material  terms. 
Our  notion  of  liberty  is  no  more  obscure,  no  less 
ultimate,  than  our  notion  of  causation  ;  and, 
precisely  like  that  notion,  it  marshals  an  im- 
mense number  of  phenomena  to  which  it  alone 
can  eive  order.  Evolution  thus  leaves  us  with 
the  surface  of  the  stream  and  the  depths  of  the 
stream ;  Its  smooth  stretches,  its  ripples,  its 
torn   and  angry  surges — all  alike   suggestive. 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.       95 

Phenomena  are  the  provocations  of  reason,  a 
perpetual  appeal  to  the  soul  of  man  ;  the  elec- 
tric currents  which  we  can  in  no  way  figure  to 
the  senses,  but  into  whose  intricate  interplay 
we  are  diligently  inquiring. 

Evolution  croes  further.  It  shows  the  world 
to  be  vital  as  one  whole.  Reason  is  ever  flow- 
ing into  it  and  flowing  out  of  it.  It  is  as  in- 
evitably inductive  of  rational  processes,  and  as 
certainly  comes  under  their  reaction,  as  one 
magnetic  current  affects  by  its  immediate  pres- 
ence another.  There  are  no  laws  which  har- 
ass liberty,  many  laws  which  facilitate  it ;  no 
decrees  which  bar  freedom,  many  which  demand 
its  prompt  use.  There  are  no  forces  so  self- 
contained  that  they  do  not  stand  on  terms  of 
relation  with  other  forces.  Make  the  material 
world  as  firm  and  inclusive  as  you  will,  and  still 
influences  from  beyond  it  creep  in  upon  it. 
Assert  what  you  please  of  the  spirituality  of 
spiritual  things,  sensuous  forces  are  constantly 
finding  their  way  among  them.  These  com- 
ings and  goings  we  see,  whether  we  know  or 
do  not  know  whence  they  come  and  whither 
they  go.  It  is  so  on  the  supposition  we  have 
accepted  in  reference  to  divine  agencies  ;  it  is 
so  in  reference  to  man  as  a  spiritual    being 


96  Evolution  and  Relig-ion 


on  any  tenable  theory  concerning  him.  The 
physical  does  yield,  constantly  and  freely  yield, 
to  the  intellectual ;  is  living  stuff  played  upon 
by  spiritual  powers. 

Under  this  conception,  the  embarrassment  of 
decrees  partially  disappears.  The  time  ele- 
ment is  no  longer  troublesome.  God  is  deter- 
mining, not  has  determined,  events.  The 
mind  and  heart  of  God  are  here  and  now  in 
the  world,  and  give  us  the  best  possible  oppor- 
tunity to  work  with  them  in  a  living,  loving, 
flexible  way.  So  it  is  also,  in  our  own  action,  if 
we  bring  man  face  to  face  with  physical  laws. 
They  lose  much  of  their  fatalistic  character. 
They  do  not  preclude,  they  provoke,  interven- 
tion. They  make  way  for  liberty.  They  are 
the  servants  of  liberty.  They  have  just  that 
permanence  and  power  which  enable  them 
to  accept  and  store  for  us  our  activities.  They 
have  that  well-defined  response  under  them 
which  reveals  to  us  the  methods  of  success. 
They  are  like  well-tempered  clay,  which  yields 
itself  with  sympathetic  facility  to  the  creative 
touch. 

It  is  in  the  presence  of  an  evolutionary 
world  that  we  apprehend  those  sweeping 
words    of   our   Lord:  "Ask,   and  it   shall    be 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.       97 

given  you  ;  seek,  and  ye  shall  find  ;  knock,  and 
it  shall  be  opened  unto  you."  The  asking 
temper — a  temper  which  expresses  the  steady 
momentum  of  the  mind  in  the  pursuit  of  its 
purposes — must  prevail.  All  things  flow  to- 
gether freely — from  within  and  from  without, 
from  above  and  from  below,  from  nature,  from 
man  and  from  God,  in  evolution.  We  stand 
centre-wise  in  creation  :  we  create,  and  we  are 
created.  The  ocean  buoys  us  up,  the  winds 
blow  for  us  ;  but  we  choose  our  guiding  star, 
and  our  hand  is  on  the  helm.  Are  we  not 
correct,  then,  in  saying  that  evolution  casts 
the  clearest  light  we  have  on  the  most  funda- 
mental problem  in  personal  life,  the  interaction 
of  physical  and  spiritual  things  ;  more  than 
this,  that  it  reveals  most  certainly,  and  teaches 
most  clearly,  the  growth  and  the  method  of 
growth  by  which  the  spiritual  separates  itself 
from  the  physical,  and  increasingly  rules  over 
it.  Thus  are  the  waters  which  are  under  the 
firmament  divided  from  the  waters  which  are 
above  the  firmament,  yet  with  an  habitual 
interplay  ever  more  visible  and  more  benefi- 
cent. The  sense  of  a  divine  providence  in  our 
lives  has  been  a  ruling  force  in  faith,  yet  it 
has  broucrht  with  it  endless  confusion.      If  this 


9^  Evolution  and  Reliction. 


providence  has  been  regarded  as  strictly  gen- 
eral, it  has  lost  consolatory  power.  If  it  has 
been  made  special,  it  has  failed  in  proof,  and 
has  readily  become  ridiculous.  An  evolution 
which  constantly  encloses  us  in  the  creative 
process,  physical  and  spiritual,  renders  that 
providence  at  once  comprehensive  and  pliant. 

The  steps  which  lead  up  to  this  more  vital 
conception  are  themselves  evolutionary.  Man 
first  comes  to  a  sense  of  his  own  powers, 
exaggerates  them,  and  gives  them,  in  the  in- 
terpretation of  the  world,  wide  inferential  ex- 
tension. Extreme  as  may  be  this  separation 
of  the  personal  element  before  the  proper  cor- 
rection is  present,  it  lies  none  the  less  in  the 
direction  of  growth.  Men  come  to  recognize 
spiritual  influences,  and  are  made  wakeful  to 
them. 

Later,  men  gain  more  knowledge  of  the 
physical  world  :  they  recognize  its  immense 
momentum,  and  the  consequent  limitations  it 
brings  to  the  will  of  man.  This  conception, 
in  turn,  becomes  extreme,  but,  taken  with  the 
previous  one,  is  corrective  and  constructive. 
Not  till  the  two  coalesce,  and  mutually  qualify 
each  other,  does  the  world  offer  itself  as  at 
once  truly  physical  and  truly  spiritual ;  not  by 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.       99 

division  and  by  parts,  but  by  interpenetration 
everywhere.  The  world  is  at  any  moment  a 
definite  and  wholly  intelligible  product,  but  at 
every  moment  it  is  ready  to  take  on  higher 
and  wider  expression. 

Thus  we  are  led  to  substitute  for  "  conver- 
sion," a  sudden  convulsive  change  in  the  spirit 
itself,  growth,  a  slow  healthy  accumulation  of 
life.  We  come  to  understand  that  our  lives 
gain  their  true  powers,  not  by  being  uprooted, 
but  by  being  rooted  in  a  more  wholesome  and 
comprehensive  way  in  the  world.  We  have 
made  the  same  mistake  in  theology  that  we 
have  made  in  penology.  We  have  expected 
that  a  few  concentrated  and  terrible  motives 
would  sweep  from  the  heart  of  man  its  evil 
passions,  and  make  it  fruitful  in  obedience. 
We  have  not  understood  how  many,  how 
slight,  how  far  and  near,  are  the  incentives 
which  promote  and  secure  spiritual  develop- 
ment ;  and  how  confluent  they  must  become 
from  all  quarters  of  the  physical  and  social 
world  before  they  can  show  their  divine  inter- 
lock and  adequacy.  A  sudden  surging-in  of 
forces  is  no  more  conducive  of  spiritual  growth 
than  is  a  deluge  of  vegetable  life.  The  dew- 
drops,  the  gentle,  discontinuous  rain,  are  the 


loo  Evolution  and  Religion. 

servants  of  God.  The  violent  converging 
forces  which  express  themselves  in  "conver- 
sion "  are  very  inferior  in  productive  power  to 
the  manifold,  ever-varied,  and  ever-renewed 
incentives  which  steal  in  upon  us  from  a 
world  deeply  at  one  with  us  in  its  wants 
and  discipline.  Indeed,  to  understand  this 
concurrence  of  the  outer  and  inner  world  is 
spiritual  life.  That  development  which  gathers 
up  the  power  of  the  world  in  our  lives,  and 
spreads  our  lives  responsively  over  the  world, 
is  the  only  wide  and  growing  union  of  the  soul 
with  God. 

This  evolution  reconciles  authority  and  rea- 
son. It  may  be  true  that  nine  tenths  of  our 
actions  and  our  beliefs  rest  on  authority  ;  that 
ninety-nine  hundredths  of  the  efforts  of  men, 
and  those  the  most  successful,  repose  on  cus- 
tom. The  supreme  authority  of  reason  is  in 
no  way  weakened  thereby.  Seeds  have  not 
much  bulk,  but  the  potentialities  of  the  world 
are  in  them.  The  buds  of  a  tree  are  but  a 
small  portion  of  its  entire  mass,  yet  they  alone 
are  the  significant  parts.  All  has  been  built 
up  in  due  order  by  them.  The  thoughts  of 
men,  as  swayed  by  reason  and  reconstructed 
under  it,  are  the  intellectually  vital  points  in 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution. 


lo: 


the  spiritual  world.       Here  it  is  that  human 
life    takes    on    new    forms,    new  powers,    new 
promise.      Reason  leaves  behind  it  a  great  deal 
of  authority,— as   the  succulent   bud  deposits 
woody  fibre— but  no  authority  goes  before  it. 
Evolution  is  always  directing  our  attention  to 
the  next  significant  change  ;  and  that  is  sure  to 
be,  in  the  spiritual  world,  the  fresh  product  of 
thought.      Authority  does  not  enter  in  suspen- 
sion of  reason,  it  enters  in  enforcement  of  it. 
It   checks  inquiry  which  is  superficial,   inade- 
quate, and  captious.      It  presses  the  too  loose 
earth  around  the  roots,   that  these  may  take 
hold   by  contact   and   grow.      Legitimate   au- 
thority is  only  the  emphasis   to  which  sound 
reason  is  entitled.      It  is  asserting  ownership 
till  a  better  right  is  ofi"ered.      It  is  the  lead  of 
mind  among  minds  that  must  be  led. 

So  also  the  natural  and  the  supernatural, 
with  neither  of  which  we  have  found  ourselves 
able  to  dispense,  are  reconciled  in  evolution. 

The  natural  absorbs  the  supernatural  and 
becomes  vital  under  it,  as  the  dry,  harsh  sponge 
drinks  in  water  and  is  instantly  pliable  in  ser- 
vice ;  as  the  plant,  awakening  to  new  life  in 
the  springtime,  puts  forth  power  in  all  the 
strange,  beautiful  ways  of  its  kind.      A  simply 


I02  Evolution  and  Religion. 

natural  world,  one  finished  to  its  last  feature, 
exhausted  of  all  further  possibilities,  is  a  dead 
world,  is  not  at  all  the  world  of  evolution. 
By  the  conception  and  by  the  fact  of  evolution 
we  are  in  the  midst  of  a  creative  process  that 
moves  so  orderly  that  we  can  understand  it, 
so  slowly  that  we  can  take  part  in  it,  and  with 
such  growing  significance  that  we  feel  at  once 
its  inspiration.  Its  supersensuous,  superna- 
tural force  is  disclosed  in  the  marvellous  incre- 
ments it  takes  on  ;  in  the  ruling  idea  nestled  at 
its  centre  ;  in  the  care  with  which  man,  its  most 
conspicuous  intellectual  product  and  concur- 
rent agent,  weaves  his  thought  into  it.  We 
win,  by  a  cordial  recognition  of  the  natural, 
not  only  a  new  world,  but  one  of  far  greater 
breadth  for  the  uses  of  the  spirit  than  the  one 
we  left  behind.  Our  powers  take  root  at  once 
by  means  of  it  ;  and  what  at  first  we  seemed  to 
lose,  as  a  farmer  loses  the  seed  he  sows,  we 
quickly  gain  again,  as  the  farmer  gains  his 
harvest.  The  fatal  facility  of  our  religious 
volitionalism,  by  which  our  will  or  the  will  of 
God  is  hardly  more  productive  of  permanent 
results  than  is  the  veering  of  the  wind,  disap- 
pears, and  we  find  ourselves  called  on  to  incor- 
porate our  lives  slowly,  but  forever,  into  the 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     lo 


J 


very  substance  of  the  creative  process.  All 
that  the  spirit  of  man  has  struggled  for,  and 
laid  hold  of  in  such  an  inadequate  way  In  the 
supernatural, — a  spiritual  presence  In  the  world, 
ready  to  put  forth  Its  strength  In  behalf  of  a 
divine  order — Is  more  than  secured,  It  is  trans- 
lated into  God  Immanent  In  the  very  heart  of 
the  world.  The  two  spheres,  physical  and 
spiritual,  are  once  more  commensurate,  once 
more  melt  into  each  other,  as  the  mind  into 
the  body,  and  the  body  into  the  mind.  Evo- 
lution thus  exalts  our  personal  potency  to  its 
highest  terms,  placing  it  In  full  possession  of  a 
world  Increasingly  worth  the  possession.  The 
natural  Is  for  the  supernatural,  the  superna- 
tural Is  by  and  through  the  natural. 

There  are  many  striking  illustrations  of  the 
deeper  meaning  given  to  doctrines  of  faith  by 
the  theory  of  evolution.  In  place  of  the  fall 
of  Adam,  original  sin,  inherited  sin,  the  trans- 
mission of  penalty  to  the  third  and  fourth  gen- 
eration, we  have  the  burden  of  an  inferior 
animal  life,  only  slowly  shaken  off,  and  per- 
meated with  utmost  difficulty  with  higher, 
more  vital  impulses.  The  first  series  of  be- 
liefs Is  a  rendering  of  the  facts  of  human  life 
theoretically,  with  Inadequate  knowledge  ;  the 


I04  Evolution  and  Religion. 

second  is  a  re-renderlng  of  them,  to  the  same 
ends,  under  an  extended  historical  grasp  of  the 
situation.  One  is  as  much  struck  with  the 
concurrence  of  the  earher  and  later  doctrines 
as  with  their  difference.  Especially  is  this 
true  in  reference  to  their  moral,  disciplinary 
force.  What  a  pathetic  truthfulness  is  im- 
parted to  the  experience  of  St.  Paul :  "  I  see 
another  law  in  my  members  warring  against 
the  law  of  the  mind,  and  bringing  me  into  cap- 
tivity to  the  law  which  is  in  my  members.  O 
wretched  man  that  I  am  !  Who  shall  deliver 
me  from  the  body  of  this  death  ? "  The 
higher  spiritual  life  has  not  yet  won  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  lower  physical  life.  The  in- 
ferior animal  impulse  thrusts  itself  forward 
constantly  in  limitation  or  in  rejection  of  the 
superior  intellectual  one. 


II. 


Great  as  is  the  force  of  the  evolutionary 
idea  when  taken  in  connection  with  our  in- 
dividual life,  it  is  greater  still  in  its  disclosure 
of  the  true  nature  of  our  collective  life.  What- 
ever we  may  think  about  a  rapid  expan- 
sion   of   personal    power,    we    are    compelled 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     105 

to  see  that  no  such  expansion  Is  open  to  our 
communal  strength,  and  that  this  strength 
must  set  limits  to  all  the  spiritual  life  associ- 
ated with  It.  The  flight  of  the  bird  must  be 
measured  by  the  extent  of  the  atmosphere  in 
which  It  moves.  It  belongs  to  genius  to  some- 
what transcend  customary  boundaries  :  It  does 
not  belong  to  It  to  transcend  them  In  all  de- 
grees. The  stroke  of  its  wing  must  bring 
some  reaction  to  It,  or  It  soon  falls. 

We  Indicate  a  few  of  the  ways  In  which  our 
collective  life  finds  expansion  and  consolida- 
tion by  evolution — a  separation  of  parts,  and  a 
gathering  together  of  parts  in  a  more  truly 
organic  form.  Our  religious  life — the  con- 
struction of  a  supersensuous  experience  in 
wise  and  beneficent  response  to  our  sensuous 
experience — Is  plainly  one  of  social  develop- 
ment. It  calls,  like  fine  art,  for  a  penetrative, 
subtile,  ever-renewed  Insight  Into  the  Inner 
force  of  those  physical  and  social  facts  which 
we  are  weaving  together  In  history.  Men  go 
stumbling  on  In  the  religious  world,  as  those 
whose  vision  has  not  yet  been  adjusted  to  the 
attenuated  light  about  them.  Our  religious 
Ideas  need,  above  all  other  Ideas,  to  be  empiri- 
cally   correct,    to    conform    to    an    experience 


io6  Evolution  and  Reliction. 


^5 


which  has  grown  up  with  them  and  supports 
them.  It  is  difficult,  with  a  difficulty  greater 
than  we  encounter  in  any  other  direction,  to 
brine  to  them  this  constant  reconstruction,  this 
growing  response  to  the  social  world.  Our 
religious  ideas  are  rarely  our  own.  Somebody 
has  us  by  the  hand,  and  we  have  somebody  by 
the  hand.  We  move  forward  in  awkward 
squads,  thinking  ourselves  not  lost  in  the 
darkness  merely  because  there  are  so  many  of 
us.  Contact  with  other  moving  masses  be- 
comes collision,  and  none  of  us  quite  gain  our 
eyes  or  win  our  feet.  Our  religious  experi- 
ence is  so  vague,  so  variable  and  conventional, 
so  much  aside  from  the  daily  conditions  of  life, 
that  we  meet  with  the  greatest  difficulty  in 
making  it  sober,  coherent,  and  progressive. 
We  have  yet  to  develop  spiritual  organs  thor- 
oughly fitted  to  their  work,  and  to  acquire  ease 
in  the  use  of  them. 

Hitherto,  far  from  collating  the  religious 
history  of  the  world,  we  have  flung  aside  all 
but  our  own  portion  of  it,  and  have  assigned 
that  an  absolute  character  which  has  robbed  it 
of  much  of  its  instruction.  To  secure  cosmic 
terms  in  faith — and  here,  even  more  than  else- 
where, the  widest  is  the  truest  rendering — is 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     107 

the  tardy  result  of  a  most  perplexing  and  pain- 
ful experience,  one  vibrating  between  unreason- 
able fear  and  unreasonable  hope,  between  belief 
and  unbelief,  alike  extreme.  Men  have  held 
their  religious  dogmas  aloof  from  the  world, 
and  have  paid  little  or  no  attention  to  the  most 
obvious  contradictions  between  the  two.  They 
have  overborne  the  spiritual  facts  of  the  world 
by  a  preconception  concerning  them.  It  has 
been  far  from  their  thoughts  to  make  the  reve- 
lation they  received  the  counterpart  of  man's 
development.  Yet  religious  ideas  that  do  not 
receive  this  correction  become  fantastic  and 
visionary  beyond  all  other  ideas.  Nowhere  is 
the  cleansing,  evolutionary  flow  more  neces- 
sary, if  we  are  to  reach  in  our  thoughts,  so 
quickly  driven  forward  by  fanaticism,  so  easily 
stagnant  in  superstition,  so  readily  directed  by 
dogmas,  anything  like  transparency,  purity,  and 
liberty.  It  is  only  by  many  collidings,  a  long 
churning  of  our  religious  ideas  together,  that 
we  can  come,  even  proximately,  to  undertand 
their  worth  and  their  want  of  worth,  and  to 
share  the  higher  life  which  is  being  developed 
into  vision  by  virtue  of  changes  organically 
wrought  here  and  there  through  the  whole 
range  of  human  experience. 


io8  Evolution  and  Religion. 

A  second  form  of  growth  with  which  we 
meet  with  difficulty  only  a  little  less  embarrass- 
ing is  that  of  ethical  law.  This  law  lies  chiefly, 
and  always  most  clearly,  between  man  and 
man.  The  multiplying  relations  of  life,  con- 
tinually gaining  greater  breadth  and  greater 
depth,  must  be  measured  on  the  surface  with 
more  accuracy,  and  plumbed  to  the  bottom 
with  truer  feeling,  if  we  are  to  grasp  their  con- 
structive, their  ethical  law.  The  moral  order 
of  the  world  is  the  supreme  order,  and  Ave  can- 
not attain  to  it  save  as  the  result  of  the  largest 
experience  and  the  most  comprehensive  in- 
sight. The  very  fact  of  our  disobedience  to 
the  law  hides  the  law  from  us,  and  serves  to 
confuse  It  In  Its  practical  development.  Thor- 
oughly as  we  may  believe  that  this  last  analy- 
sis of  a  physlco-splrltual  world  Into  ethical  law 
Is  germane  to  human  reason,  we  shall  be  com- 
pelled to  see  that  It  can  complete  Itself  only 
under  the  most  varied  and  protracted  experi- 
ence— one  that  opens  up  somewhere,  at  some 
time,  In  some  person,  or  some  nation,  all  the 
possibilities  of  conduct  and  character ;  nay, 
more  than  this,  that  works  them  Into  a  social 
life  so  translucent  with  truth  that  It  cannot 
again  confound  itself.  So  we  win  an  ethical 
reason    Instructed    by    the    revelation    of    the 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     109 

world.  The  comprehending  thought  and  the 
comprehended  facts  run  parallel  to  each  other, 
and  call  out  growth  between  them,  as  a  fertile 
soil  and  a  genial  climate  receive  to  themselves 
the  orerms  of  life  that  lie  tremblinof  on  the 
limits  of  a  new  species. 

These  two  things,  ethical  law  and  spiritual 
life,  must  fully  affiliate  before  either  can  com- 
plete itself.  Both  must  find  extended  presen- 
tation in  the  masses  of  men.  The  centre  of 
gravity  in  the  spiritual  world  lies  deep  beneath 
the  surface.  Our  spiritual  impulses  can  gain 
volume  and  extension  only  as  they  prevail  over 
a  wide  area.  Inertia  and  momentum  alike — 
the  power  to  resist,  and  the  power  to  impel — 
are  due  to  the  magnitude  of  the  world.  Its 
superficial  magnetic  currents  stand  connected 
with  its  inner  magnetic  force.  Separation  in 
the  spiritual  world  is  fatal  to  energy. 

The  moral  law  is  the  intellectual  side  of  our 
higher  life,  its  framework  of  order,  its  theoret- 
ical harmony  and  completeness.  Religious 
faith  is  the  vital,  emotional  side  of  this  life,  is 
the  sensitive  flesh  which  clothes  the  skeleton 
of  law,  is  an  overflowing  sense  of  the  joy  and 
excellency  of  that  which  the  law  embraces  and 
defines. 

These  two,  which  come  together  like  correct 


no         Evolution  and  Religion. 

outline  and  warm  color  in  art,  arise  none  the 
less  somewhat  separately  in  human  experience, 
and  are  only  slowly  united ;  the  surface  of  ade- 
quate and  lasting  union  being  the  popular  life, 
the  tissue  of  our  social  state. 

Moral  law,  as  a  detached  experience,  found 
remarkable  expression  in  the  Stoics,  and  yet 
showed  little  power  in  correcting  the  very 
great  social  evils  with  which  it  was  in  contact. 
Stoicism  affiliated  with  the  nobler  phases  of 
Roman  character,  and  that  when  moral  and 
civic  degeneration  had  set  in  in  an  irresistible 
tide.  It  was  united,  as  a  philosophy  of  life, 
with-  impurity  in  the  household,  arbitrary  au- 
thority in  the  state,  the  exactions  of  luxury  by 
the  few,  impudent  beggary  by  the  populace, 
and  a  cruelty  in  all  which  made  of  human  suf- 
fering, as  presented  in  the  amphitheatre,  a 
passionate  public  amusement.  The  true  in- 
tellectual Insight  of  Stoicism  is  seen  In  the 
fact  that  It  was  the  product  of  a  few  superior 
minds  ;  was  the  same  whether  developed  In 
the  experience  of  a  slave,  like  Epictetus,  or  In 
that  of  an  Emperor,  like  Marcus  Aurellus  An- 
toninus ;  and  that  It  at  no  time  became  a  pop- 
ular possession.  Vice  surged  about  it  wholly 
unaffected. 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     1 1 1 

Though  the  ethical  excellence  of  Stoicism 
failed  to  become  a  rullnor  force  in  social  life,  it 
was  not  lost  in  the  great  aggregate  of  human 
experience.  Civil  law  has  always  been  the 
most  adequate  and  continuous  expression,  in 
the  general  life,  of  ethical  principles.  Much 
as  it  may  at  many  points  fall  below  them,  it 
is  ever  attracted  to  them,  and  shows  a  partial 
parallelism  with  them.  Roman  law,  a  product 
in  justice  and  breadth  much  beyond  the  social 
life  with  which  it  was  associated,  owed  much 
to  the  ethics  of  Stoicism,  and  has  helped,  in 
the  descent  of  legal  principles  in  England  and 
on  the  Continent,  to  give  to  the  general  mind, 
in  a  large  class  of  transactions,  notions  of 
equity  from  which  it  will  not  again  depart. 
While  Stoicism  was  not  able  to  spread  over 
the  popular  mind  and  possess  it,  it  became  a 
fountain  to  the  narrow  stream  of  civil  law  that 
has  kept  company  with  the  race  in  desolate 
periods  and  places. 

Religious  development  in  its  highest  phase, 
that  of  Christianity,  separated  itself  somewhat 
positively  from  morality.  It  neither  appre- 
hended truth  as  truth  and  loved  it  as  truth, 
nor  life  as  life  and  rejoiced  in  it  as  life.  The 
ethical  law  is  the  law  of  life,  both  in  its  pres- 


112  Evolution  and  Religion. 

ent  form  and  in  its  later  developments.  It 
offers  most  subtile  and  variable  phases  of 
truth,  and  must  be  searched  for  with  that 
sensitive,  penetrating,  and  earnest  temper 
which  is  able  to  reconcile  the  possibilities  of 
the  present  with  the  hopes  of  the  future.  The 
religious  development  of  the  third  century  and 
the  centuries  following  was  not  indifferent  to 
the  truth,  but  so  utterly  misconceived  it  as  to 
become,  in  its  bigotry  and  exaction,  a  most 
dangerous  enemy  to  it.  It  virtually  arrested 
the  growth  of  ethical  law  by  checking  that  per- 
sonal inquiry  and  freedom  of  action  which  are 
its  essence.  Down  to  our  own  time,  religious 
faith  has  been  more  or  less  conscious  of  this 
antagonism,  and  has  not  infrequently  attacked 
morality  as  a  wholly  inadequate  law  of  life, 
and  in  opposition  to  faith. 

Religious  belief  for  a  long  time,  by  asceti- 
cism, celibacy,  monasticism,  opposed  itself  to 
life,  mutilated  and  macerated  it,  impoverished 
and  imbittered  it,  despised  and  humbled  it. 
The  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil  became,  in 
religious  thought,  the  trinity  of  evil  against 
which  an  exterminating  warfare  was  to  be 
waeed.  The  mere  shadow  of  truth  which 
there  was  in  these  conceptions  did  not  suffice 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     113 

to  correct  the  deep  antagonism  they  involved 
to  ethical  law,  to  a  life  to  be  redeemed  In  It- 
self under  its  own  best  Impulses.  Spiritual  In- 
centives were  framed  and  enforced,  long  and 
wide.  In  painful  detachment  from  those  large 
claims  which  our  personal  powers  and  social 
relations  make  upon  us.  Religion  narrowed 
the  thoughts,  and  gave  the  affections  a  wholly 
inadequate  field.  Instead  of  making  the  world 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  It  waited  with  Im- 
patience for  a  purification  by  fire.  Its  millen- 
nium was  one  of  convulsion  and  overthrow. 

The  religious  life,  as  more  emotional  and 
less  Intellectual,  as  more  conventional  and  less 
personal,  took  more  ready  possession  of  the 
popular  mind  than  did  the  severe  and  grand 
conceptions  of  ethical  Insight.  Many  have 
been  at  a  loss  to  understand  why  the  Stoics 
so  signally  failed  to  apprehend  Christianity, 
and  found  In  It  repulsion  rather  than  attraction. 
The  superficial,  yet  most  obvious,  collision  of 
Christianity  with  that  large,  personal  life  which 
was  the  Ideal  of  Stoicism,  suf^clently  explains 
this  alienation.  How  could  the  two  coalesce, 
when  they  held  In  such  a  divisive  way  the  two 
great  elements  In  spiritual  life — the  Integrity 
of  its  Inner  law,  on  the  one  side  ;  and  the  affec- 


114  Evolution  and  Religion. 

tlons,  on  the  other  ?  These  experiences,  in 
the  form  in  which  they  were  most  urgently 
offered,  were  to  the  Stoic  degrading  supersti- 
tions ;  and  the  wealth  of  its  supersensuous  prom- 
ises and  those  ethical  injunctions  which  filled 
the  mind  of  the  Stoic  with  a  sense  of  supreme 
order,  were  to  the  Christian  cold,  powerless 
abstractions,  quite  as  likely  to  lead  those  who 
dwelt  on  them  away  from  life,  as  into  life.  A 
conflict  allied  to  this  everywhere  attends  on 
development — a  rush  for  the  amenities  and 
rewards  of  faith,  with  no  adequate  sense  of  its 
inner  scope  and  power;  or  something  of  this 
deeper  vision  united  to  an  indisposition  to 
reproduce  it  in  the  lives  of  men. 

Does  not  the  "  secret  of  Christ  " — whosoever 
will  save  his  life  shall  lose  it,  and  whosoever 
shall  lose  his  life  for  my  sake  and  the  gospel's, 
the  same  shall  save  it — lie  in  the  line  of  recon- 
ciliation ?  The  Stoic  took  the  ethical  law  in 
its  breadth  and  grandeur,  but  without  that 
Immediate  sense  of  a  divine  presence  and  those 
universal  affections  which  m.ake  obedience  easy 
and  rewardful.  The  Christian  struggled  for 
the  supersensuous  impressions  ;  but  not  ground- 
ing them  in  ethical  law,  in  human  experience, 
they  became  fanciful,  extravagant,  and  without 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     115 

permanent  productive  power.  Is  it  not  true 
that  the  scope  of  our  lives  is  so  great  on  the  one 
side,  and  the  immediate  social  contradictions  to 
them  so  many  on  the  other  side,  that  they  nec- 
essarily present  an  appearance  of  hopeless  con- 
flict ?  The  Christian  escapes  this  confusion  in 
part  by  a  violent  spiritual  uplift,  which  struggles 
to  make  for  itself  an  independent  centre.  The 
Stoic — and  the  doctrine  is  always  with  us  in 
noble  natures — fills  his  mind  with  a  fine  sense 
of  ethical  law,  and  then  defies  the  events  which 
are  constantly  assailing  his  defences.  Each 
strives  to  win  a  life  beyond  the  life  about 
them,  the  one  in  an  emotional,  the  other  in  an 
intellectual,  region.  Christ  bids  us  lose  our 
lives,  the  immediate  joy  and  comfort  of  them, 
in  a  universal  struggle  for  the  true  conditions 
of  life,  and  to  win  back  a  masterful  life,  carry- 
ing its  own  conquering  impulses  into  our 
hourly  experiences.  We  are  to  plant,  cultivate, 
and  ripen  our  virtues  in  the  sterile  soil  and 
under  the  harsh  climate  which  enclose  us,  till 
there  comes  to  be  a  spiritual  fertility  begotten 
out  of  the  corrected  processes  of  culture  itself. 
We  conquer  by  submission,  but  we  conquer. 
This  is  profoundly  rational,  but  it  is  also  pro- 
foundly   evolutionary.     The    actual    and    the 


ii6  Evolution  and  Religion. 


ideal  are  made  to  work  together  in  all  that  is 
good.  What  is  yielded  is  yielded  in  reference 
to  winning  it  back  again  in  a  better  form. 
There  is  no  defiance  and  no  contempt ;  no 
casting  away  of  anything  that  is  good,  but  a 
working  with  it  upward  into  a  more  compre- 
hensive good. 

Some,  as  Mr.  Kidd  in  his  Social  Evolution, 
have  recognized  the  power  of  religious  faith  in 
developing  wide  altruistic  impulses  which  were 
to  harmonize  society  and  reconcile  its  conflict- 
ing classes  ;  but  they  have  regarded  this  move- 
ment as  a  supernatural  one,  or,  with  Mr.  Kidd, 
as  extra  rational.  This  view  hides  from  us 
the  ethical  law,  the  law  of  reason,  profoundly 
implanted  in  the  very  nature  of  man.  Order, 
under  this  conception,  is  induced  from  without, 
not  gained  from  within  by  growth.  There  is 
no  end  of  conflict  between  impulse  and  im- 
pulse, man  and  man,  class  and  class,  in  short 
periods  and  near  relations ;  extend  the  period, 
broaden  the  spaces,  enrich  the  spirit,  give  life 
its  true  circumference,  and  the  larger  evolu- 
tionary law  makes  its  appearance.  Men  coal- 
esce by  virtue  of  a  superior  habit  of  thought. 
An  altruism  induced  as  an  irrational  habit  on  a 
spiritual  nature  alien  to  it,  could  never  become 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     1 1 7 

the  ground  of  permanent  order.  The  inner 
conflict,  uncorrected,  would  fret  against  the 
restraints  put  upon  it,  and  might  at  any  mo- 
ment break  out  afresh.  The  spiritual  devel- 
opment, when  it  comes,  must  be  supremely 
natural. 

The  altruistic  elements  in  our  physical  na- 
ture and  surroundings  are  truly  altruistic,  our 
power  a  collective  power.  As  certainly  also 
are  the  deeper  impulses  in  our  intellectual  and 
in  our  social  constitution  altruistic.  Our 
thoughts  grow  wise,  clear,  and  strong  under 
extended  personal  impact ;  our  affections  are 
gladdened  by  sympathy,  and  this  altruism  goes 
on  to  complete  itself  in  the  law  of  love.  That 
law  sends  fibres  into  the  lowest  subsoil  of  our 
physical  and  economic  prosperity,  draws  nour- 
ishment from  it,  and  returns  to  it  a  fresh  fertil- 
ity, incident  to  its  own  higher  growth.  The 
hope  and  courage  of  our  time  are  especially 
found  in  a  new  interpretation  of  all  interests,  a 
reconciliation  of  all  lines  of  development.  Our 
relieious  faith  is  submittinor  itself  to  the  correc- 
tion  of  ethical  ideas,  is  taking  up  the  precise 
duties  assigned  it  in  society,  and  is  carrying 
love  and  law  into  its  own  life  and  the  popular 
life.     Our  highest  beliefs  are  becoming  empiri- 


ii8  Evolution  and  Reliction. 


fe- 


cal, and  our  nearest  experiences  are  receiving 
the  leaven  of  spiritual  truth.  Thus  are  the 
terms  on  either  side,  which  make  up  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven,  united.  The  real  is 
idealized,  and  the  ideal  is  realized.  The  law  of 
love  is  tested  and  confirmed  by  a  comprehen- 
sive and  complex  life  subject  to  it,  and  that  life 
is  disclosed  in  its  inner  law  by  means  of  it. 
Unless  the  work  of  God  and  the  word  of  God 
coalesce  in  a  fulfilment  of  this  order,  there  can 
be  no  victory  for  either  of  them.  Evolution  is 
bringing  together  the  inner  force  and  the  outer 
form,  the  integrity  of  truth  and  the  inspiration 
of  truth,  making  by  the  two  a  new  disclosure 
of  the  divine  mind. 


III. 


We  need  to  define  evolution  anew,  if  we 
are  to  see  clearly  the  precise  way  in  which 
events  are  being  knit  together.  While  the 
conception  of  evolution  we  accept  is  thor- 
oughly theistic,  stated  simply  on  the  formal 
side,  it  does  not  differ  very  much  from 
purely  mechanical  evolution.  Evolution  in- 
volves an  empirical  unfolding  of  human  life 
as  opposed  to  a  volitional   one.     Both  experi- 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     119 

ence  and  instruction,  the  necessities  of  the  case 
perceived  by  ourselves  and  the  coercion  of  a 
superior  will,  enter  into  our  daily  lives.  It  is 
a  difficult  problem  in  discipline,  in  the  nurture 
of  children,  in  the  training  of  young  men,  in 
the  government  of  the  state,  to  reconcile  these 
two  terms.  Some  strive  to  reach  the  desired 
result  of  good  order  off  hand,  by  constraint. 
The  child  is  made  momentarily  to  feel  authority, 
the  young  man  is  met  at  every  turn  by  a  rigid 
regulation,  the  criminal  is  pursued  by  a  relent- 
less punishment.  This  volitional  discipline  is 
the  first  tendency,  the  crude  thought,  among 
men  ;  but  its  results  have  never  been  satisfac- 
tory. It  fails  to  correct  ignorance  or  evoke 
good-will,  and  often  leaves  the  mind  in  a  blind 
and  perverse  mood.  Hence  a  more  slowly 
corrective,  a  more  nutritive,  system  is  coming 
to  take  its  place.  The  discipline  is  made  em- 
pirical. The  mind  is  quickened  by  its  own 
processes  ;  the  events  of  life  are  made  to  inter- 
pret and  enforce  themselves,  and  to  yield  to 
the   awakened  feelino-s  the   motives   to  virtue 

o 

which  they  really  contain.  There  is  something 
of  the  same  difference  between  a  volitional  im- 
pression and  an  empirical  lesson  that  there  is 
between  a  device  painted  on  the  arm  and  one 


I20  Evolution  and  Relio-ion. 


^ 


pricked  into  the  flesh,  between  a  remedy  that 
for  the  moment  checks  disordered  action  in 
the  physical  system  and  one  which  steadily  re- 
restores  it  to  its  normal  state. 

The  doctrine  of  evolution  regards  the  disci- 
pline  of  the  world  as  thoroughly  empirical. 
The  mind  is  taught  and  strengthened  by  its 
own  rendering  of  events,  and  by  the  response 
of  events  to  it.  Erroneous  and  evil  impulses, 
are  displaced  by  those  wiser  and  more  salutary. 
We  have  great  difficulty,  while  accepting  in  a 
general  way  this  government  of  the  world  by 
growth,  in  recognizing  fully  what  it  involves. 
It  sets  aside  optimism,  except  that  optimism 
which  is  contained  in  the  very  fact  of  a  scheme 
of  development  as  opposed  to  one  of  overrul- 
ing counsel.  Optimism  includes  at  every  step 
the  recognition  of  some  method,  some  form  of 
action,  as  the  very  best,  and  its  instant  intro- 
duction. It  finds  no  difficulty  in  doing  and  in 
having  the  best.  The  best  is  clearly  defined 
for  it.  Its  feeling  is  allied  to  that  of  the  father 
who  proposes  to  carry  his  son  smoothly  along 
a  prosperous  path  by  the  pressure  and  bestow- 
ments  of  his  own  right  hand.  This  optimism, 
this  volitional  method,  is  inconsistent  with  it- 
self.   It  unites  incompatible  elements.  Strength, 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     121 

virtue,  while  they  are  recognized  as  the  prod- 
ucts of  will  in  one's  own  life,  are  made  the 
products  of  a  foreign  will  in  another's  life. 
While  the  spiritual  state  must  be  personal,  if, 
when  it  has  been  won,  it  is  to  be  of  any  value, 
the  winning  of  it  is  largely  by  an  exterior,  im- 
personal process.  The  volitional  element  easily 
destroys  its  own  significance,  after  it  has  en- 
tered our  experience,  by  this  undue  extension 
of  it. 

Voluntaryism  is  no  more  admissible  as  a 
divine  method  of  remedying  the  evils  of  the 
world.  If  volition  can  do  any  and  every  thing, 
it  can  undo  any  and  every  thing,  and  nothing 
is  truly  done.  Voluntary  effort  preserves  its 
value  by  being  firmly  inwrought  with  that 
which  is  not  voluntary,  but  is  an  aggregate  of 
the  everlasting  forces  and  laws  of  the  world. 
It  is  thus  we  secure  creation.  We  cannot 
even  take  part  in  a  game, — as  that  of  chess — if 
we  insist  on  replacing  our  men  to  suit  an  exi- 
gency, or  on  varying  the  rules  of  play  to  meet 
an  immediate  want.  The  will  measures  itself 
and  preserves  itself  along  the  fixed  lines  of 
causation.  It  is  these  that  present  the  wise 
problem  of  wise  over  sight,  and  these  that  hold 
fast  each  of  the  terms  in  its  solution. 


122  Evolution  and  Religion. 

The  discipline  of  the  world  on  its  physical 
side  is,  and  may  well  be,  more  purely  empiri- 
cal,  because  it   is   associated  with   nurture, — 
counsel  and  aid  among  men — and  is  thereby 
supplemented   and   strengthened   on   the  per- 
sonal   side.      Persuasion,    command,    freedom, 
come  with  persons,  and  make  the  basis  of  stern 
necessity  and  inflexible  law  in  things  the  more 
apparent  and  the  more  necessary.     We  should 
be  building  on  quicksand,  if  all  were  volitional. 
We  often  suffer,  as  it  is,  by  putting  another's 
knowledge  in  place  of  our  own  knowledge,  an- 
other's will   for  our  ow^n  will.     The  personal 
element  in  the  government  of  the  world  comes 
to  us  chiefly  through  the  persons  in  the  world, 
and  by  its  nearness  to  our  lives,  its  warmth  of 
affection,  its  evident  potency  over  events,  pre- 
vents our  conceiving  the  world  as  a  dead  piece 
of  mechanism.      We  are  helped  toward  the  vi- 
tal conception — a  conception  so  natural,  so  in- 
evitable, yet  one  which  so  many  have  found 
beset   vv^ith    contradictions — of    the   world    as 
something  being  made,  holding  in  itself  each 
moment  a  changing  possibility,  an  eternal  po- 
tency.     We   are  not   allowed   to   fall  into  an 
insect  sort  of  logic,  that  spins  its  entire  thread 
from  one  centre,  and  makes  its  conclusions  the 
grave  of  its  powers. 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     123 

The  empirical  discipline  of  the  world  is  con- 
stantly misapprehended  even  by  those  who  ac- 
cept it.  It  does  not  allow  of  any  criticism  of 
the  divine  movement  as  too  slow  and  too 
painful.  Such  fault-finding  implies  that  a 
stroke  of  will,  a  little  outside  pressure  or  com- 
pulsion, could  overcome  this  evil,  and  quicken 
development.  It  is  as  in  training  one  of  a 
feeble  mind.  The  effort  must  be  cautious,  pa- 
tient, never  at  a  pace  that  overmasters  the 
powers.  Any  pushing  of  the  thoughts  con- 
fuses them,  entangles  them  afresh.  Any  ur- 
gency of  love  repels  the  feeble  affections.  The 
plant  is  "  drawn,"  not  strengthened,  by  a  strong 
light  in  a  single  direction.  So  able  and  can- 
did a  critic  as  Lecky  speaks  in  this  way : 
''  The  period  of  Catholic  ascendency  was,  on 
the  whole,  one  of  the  most  deplorable  in  the 
history  of  the  human  mind.  The  energies  of 
Christendom  were  diverted  from  all  useful  and 
progressive  studies,  and  were  wholly  expended 
on  theological  disquisitions."  * — "  Mediaeval 
Catholicism  discouraged  and  suppressed  in 
every  way  secular  studies,  while  it  conferred  a 
monopoly  of  wealth,  and  honour,  and  power 
upon  the  distinguished  theologians."  f     While 

*  History  of  European  Morals.     W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  vol.  ii.,  p.  218. 
f  Ibid.,  p.  222. 


124  Evolution  and  Religion. 

this  language  is  very  intelligible  and  very 
truthful  as  the  expression  of  a  feeling  which 
belongs  to  a  later  and  a  higher  position,  It  con- 
tains an  Implication  quite  at  war  with  a  correct 
conception  of  evolution.  The  scientist  tells  us 
what  religion  has  done  and  failed  to  do,  and 
the  religionist  responds  with  his  censures  of 
science  in  its  spiritual  Impulses.  But  there  is 
neither  religion  nor  science  as  an  entity  work- 
ing any  results,  good  or  bad.  In  human  history. 
The  method  of  expression  Is  a  convenient  one 
by  which  we  refer  this  and  that  result  to  relig- 
ion or  to  science,  and  we  do  not  hesitate,  there- 
fore, to  use  It ;  but  It  Is  wholly  a  figurative  one, 
and  miay  readily  be  very  misleading.  There 
are  at  any  one  time  such  and  such  men,  with 
certain  predilections,  with  an  experience  of 
lights  and  shadows  of  a  given  kind.  All  that 
Is  possible  to  the  race  at  any  one  place  and 
time,  Is  an  unfolding  of  the  dominant  phase  of 
life,  a  pushing  of  It  forward  Into  the  successes 
and  failures  normal  to  It,  and  so  making  ready 
for  a  later  separation  and  relation  as  experi- 
ence shall  pronounce  upon  them.  The  theo- 
logian has  not,  with  far-sighted  perversity, 
anticipated  and  forestalled  scientific  Inquiry. 
He  has  not  diverted  energies  which  were  ready 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     125 

for  useful  studies  from  their  pursuit.  He  has 
simply  obeyed  the  dominant  impulse  as  he  and 
others  conceived  it.  He  has  given  life  the  ex- 
pansion it  was  seeking. 

When  the  scientific  tendency  arose,  it  had 
its  own  personal  life,  gained  its  extension  in  a 
reactionary  way  from  a  previous  period,  and 
fell  at  once  under  its  own  limitations.  We  are 
only  waiting  for  a  higher  altitude  to  condemn, 
in  a  very  unqualified  way,  the  secular,  unspirit- 
ual  impulses  which  arise  in  connection  with 
physical  inquiries  too  zealously  and  too  exclu- 
sively pursued.  The  sphere  of  personal  liberty 
and  personal  responsibility  is  a  great  deal 
narrower  than  this  language,  so  familiar  to  us, 
implies.  The  correction  follows  after,  and  is 
involved  in,  the  error,  and  itself  gives  rise  to  a 
new  error  and  a  further  correction.  We  spir- 
itualize and  we  secularize  our  notions  in  suc- 
cession as  a  slow  and  painful  method  of  bringing 
the  two  elements  together,  yet  the  movement 
can  by  no  possibility  be  made  greatly  different 
from  what  it  is.  We  take  each  his  own  part 
in  it,  make  our  mistakes,  and  encounter  our 
responsibilities  ;  but  the  germinant,  volitional 
cell,  significant  as  it  always  must  be,  revolves 
under  a  swirl  of  events  much  too  powerful  for  it. 


126  Evolution  and  Religion. 

It  Is  convenient  for  us  to  speak  as  if  we  got 
in  each  other's  way, — and  in  a  very  hmited 
measure  we  do — but  the  assertion  does  not, 
under  evolution,  express  any  fundamental  fact. 
It  is  simply  projecting  a  narrow  volitional  out- 
look of  our  own  on  the  world  at  laro-e.  Error 
and  correction,  religion  and  science,  are  equally 
included  in  evolution.  The  error  seems  to  de- 
lay us  ;  yet  it  compels  the  correction,  and  gives 
to  our  thoughts  a  clearness  not  otherwise  at- 
tainable. The  obstinacy  of  faith  makes  inquiry 
the  more  bold,  and  the  baldness  of  the  physi- 
cal statement  drives  us  back  again  to  the  inner 
rendering  of  the  mind. 

The  intellectual  and  volitional  experiences 
which  play  around  this  movement  are  transient 
and  relatively  trifling.  Much  as  they  may  con- 
tain of  our  individual  wealth,  they  do  not  meas- 
ure our  collective  wealth.  They  are  at  no 
time  controlling.  They  are  at  best  a  photo- 
sphere— an  exterior  glory  which  rests  back  on 
a  permanent  productive  centre.  The  theolo- 
gian is  as  certainly  after  his  kind  as  is  the 
scientist  after  his  kind.  Each  has  a  weighty 
part  in  the  great  aggregate  of  life.  There 
comes,  in  reference  to  each,  a  moment  of  selec- 
tion, in  which  they  give  way  to  something  be- 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     127 

yond  themselves,  but  their  own  offspring.  The 
theologian  now  experiences  the  disadvantage 
of  having  overlived  his  hour,  and  the  scientist 
the  advantage  of  entering  on  his  hour.  The 
distinction  is  not  material.  As  in  the  parable 
of  the  servants  hired  into  the  vineyard,  the 
reward  may  be  much  the  same,  though  the  hours 
of  starting  work  are  diverse.  The  growing 
integrity  of  life  in  all  its  forms  is  what  we  need 
to  see,  and  to  make  its  consolation  irrevocably 
our  own  under  this  supreme  idea  of  evolution. 
Each  phase  of  human  experience  stands  in  a 
productive  relation,  backward  and  forward, 
and,  having  exhausted  its  ministrations,  gives 
way  to  a  more  immediately  effective  form. 
Evolution  is  not  pledged  to  make  no  mistakes, 
to  occasion  no  delays.  Quite  the  reverse. 
Every  marked  achievement  is  simply  a  depar- 
ture from  things  defective  in  reference  to  it ; 
each  superior  form  of  life  gains  ground  by  con- 
trast. All  that  the  conception  Involves,  Is  that 
a  generative  and  shifting  process  shall  go  for- 
ward, and  that  It  will  Issue  In  a  progress  of  the 
most  undeniable  and  permanent  character. 
The  growth  achieved  will  take  possession  of 
the  soil  beneath  and  the  air  above,  and  unite 
them  In  new  and  productive  ways  ;  will,  like  a 


128  Evolution  and  Reliction. 


^:>- 


plant,  inhale  the  atmosphere  of  the  world,  and 
cast  its  own  spores  into  that  atmosphere.  Yet, 
tardy  as  this  movement,  looked  on  collectively, 
may  seem  to  be,  no  one  ever  takes  part  in  it, 
pursues  it  in  the  form  of  truth,  or  crystallizes  it 
in  the  form  of  character,  and  finds  himself 
straitened  in  his  opportunities  and  resources. 
The  victory  that  comes  to  him  he  owes  as  much 
to  difficulties  as  to  facilities,  to  ways  that  he 
has  opened  for  himself  as  to  ways  that  have 
been  opened  for  him. 

The  generative  processes  are  more  rapid  in 
the  intellectual  and  the  spiritual  world  than  in 
the  physical  world,  and  the  selection  more 
comprehensive  and  positive.  There  is  physi- 
cal selection  of  physical  strength,  and  intel- 
lectual selection  of  truth  ;  ethical  selection  of 
righteousness,  and  sesthetical  selection  of 
beauty  ;  social  selection  of  organic  force,  and 
spiritual  selection  of  divine  inspiration.  All 
concur,  and,  though  their  full  concurrence  calls 
for  a  wide  empirical  life,  there  are  also  corre- 
spondingly numerous  affinities  that  are  push- 
ing for  it  in  many  invincible  ways.  Though 
physical  evolution  seems  the  slowest,  most 
Independent,  and  most  difficult  portion  of  this 
conjoint  development,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     129 

find  it  to-day  in  advance  rather  than  in  rear 
of  the  general  movement.  The  powers  which 
men  are  coming  to  have  at  their  disposal,  as 
in  the  case  of  fire-arms  and  dynamite,  are  in 
excess  of  the  moral  temper  they  are  bringing 
to  their  use.  If  social  progress  were  propor- 
tioned to  physical  progress,  physical  progress 
would  receive  at  once  a  marvellous  impulse. 
The  facility  of  thought,  if  it  can  be  made  to 
issue  on  the  one  side  in  spiritual  evolution, 
is  sure  to  issue  on  the  other  in  an  astonish- 
ing mastery  of  the  world.  The  real  drag  is 
in  the  moral  temper,  and  the  delay  tends  to 
correct  and  instruct  that  temper.  It  is  evolu- 
tion as  an  empirical  discipline,  a  steady  com- 
minuting and  commingling  of  the  elements 
of  life,  that  we  wish  to  consider  in  a  few  of 
its  spiritual  phases. 

If  we  accept  evolution  as  a  truly  rational 
theory  of  the  universe  ;  if  we  see  no  other  way 
in  which  life  and  knowledge,  freedom  and 
power,  can  be  made  so  wide,  so  universal,  so 
substantial  a  possession,  then  the  slowness  of 
the  movement  is  inseparable  from  its  nature, 
and  ceases  to  be  an  objection.  As  in  the 
building-up  of  a  Japanese  vase,  the  only  ques- 
tion that  remains  pertinent  is.  Does  the  beauty 


130  Evolution  and  Religion. 

of  the  product  justify  the  labor  ?  The  move- 
ment is  sure  to  be  as  rapid  as  it  can  be,  all  its 
liabilities,  its  misdirections  and  redirections, 
being  duly  weighed.  They  all  play  their  part 
in  the  final  product.  The  only  points  of  haste 
and  urgency  are  those  personal,  volitional  ones 
where  we  ourselves  act  on  the  process,  and  are 
acted  on  by  it.  It  is  here  that  the  sense  of 
great  need  and  great  power  germinates  in  a 
higher  life.  As  in  the  flow  of  the  glaciers,  it 
is  here  that  the  immense  pressure  dissolves 
and  then  reunites  the  molecules. 

The  same  is  true  in  reference  to  suffering. 
We  have  only  one  simple  question  to  answer  : 
Are  intellectual  life  and  spiritual  life  worth 
the  winninof  ?  This  beino^  conceded,  it  is  no 
longer  rational  for  us  to  bewail  each  new  hard- 
ship. The  suffering  of  the  world  is  an  insepara- 
ble part  of  its  discipline.  It  is  the  disclosure  of 
failure,  complete  or  partial.  It  corrects  our 
errors,  gives  tone  to  our  social  life,  and  is  the 
background  of  our  spiritual  joys.  Suffering 
is  an  essential  element  in  human  experience, 
rendered  in  terms  of  evolution,  and,  like 
delay,  is  measured  by  the  very  exigency  in 
which  it  is  involved.  The  suffering  is  the 
exigency,  and    the    exigency  is  the   suffering. 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     131 

The  question  Is  not,  whether  life  Is  worth 
living,  looked  on  as  a  present  aggregate  of 
pains  and  pleasures,  of  woes  and  joys,  but 
whether  an  adequate  goal  of  so  mixed  an 
experience  Is  before  us  ?  The  world,  once 
redeemed  Into  Its  own  proper  life,  would  push 
the  query  aside  as  of  no  force.  A  woman, 
when  she  Is  In  travail,  hath  sorrow  because 
her  hour  Is  come  ;  but  so  soon  as  she  Is  de- 
livered of  the  child,  she  remembereth  no  more 
the  anguish  for  joy  that  a  man  Is  born  Into 
the  world. 

The  suffering  In  animal  life  we  believe  to 
be  greatly  exaggerated,  and,  such  as  It  Is,  to 
be  an  Inseparable  subordinate  part  that  goes 
with  the  entire  scheme.  It  Is  a  victory  over 
death  that  we  are  winnlnor  •  and  that  not  for 
ourselves  only,  but  for  the  whole  creation,  that 
travalleth  In  pain  until  now.  We  do  not  labor 
these  points.  They  are  all  Involved  In  evo- 
lution, and  we  accept  evolution  both  as  a 
fact  and  as  a  scheme.  Life  rejoices  In  Itself ; 
and  the  higher  the  life,  the  greater  the  joy. 
Grief,  despondency,  are  simply  the  decadence 
of  life,  the  retardation  of  the  movement, 
grinding  upon  Itself.  Movement,  evolution, 
is  a  universal  joy,    "a  joy  forever."     We   are 


132  Evolution  and  Religion. 

waiting  only  for  a  confluence  of  forces,  a 
harmony  of  sweet  sounds,  the  instant  when 
creation  discloses  itself  to  itself. 

The  fundamental  points  in  this  doctrine  of 
development,  as  associated  with  religious  life, 
are,  whether  evolution  is  truly  applicable  to 
that  life ;  whether  the  phases  of  spiritual 
experience  through  which  we  are  passing  do 
correct  each  other,  and  lead  to  a  general  up- 
lift of  thought  and  action  ;  and  whether  the 
mind  can  accept  growth  as  an  ultimate  result. 

Is  there  a  spiritual  life^a  life  of  its  own  order, 
the  natural  continuation  and  fulfilment  of  the 
life  we  now  lead?  Comparatively  few  have 
failed  to  catch  sight,  less  or  more  clearly,  of 
this  promise  of  the  future,  but  have  found  it 
opposed,  in  the  forms  in  which  it  has  been 
offered,  to  the  nature  of  man  and  the  facts  of 
the  world.  It  has  frequently  been  accepted  in 
flat  contradiction  of  existing  things,  and  fre- 
quently been  denied  because  no  such  contra- 
diction was  a  tenable  belief.  Evolution  not 
only  requires  an  ever  more  complete  life,  but 
that  this  life  should  be  thoroughly  Integrated 
with,  and  the  product  of,  our  present  life. 
Animallty,  rationality,  spirituality,  are  not  only 
ascending  terms  in  one  movement :  they  are 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     133 

sustaining  and  completing  terms  as  well.  Evo- 
lution is  not  allied  to  motion,  which,  in  assum- 
ing a  new  position,  forsakes  the  old  one,  but 
to  growth,  which  Includes  with  what  it  gains 
all  that  has  already  been  acquired. 

By  spirituality  we  understand  the  presence 
In  the  mind,  as  constant  incentives  of  thought 
and  action,  as  Interpreting  and  exhilerating 
conceptions,  of  those  supersensuous  relations 
which  unite  us  to  an  Invisible  world,  and  are 
its  framework.  Religious  faith  gives  these 
ideas  in  their  most  ample  and  effective  form. 
That  these  conceptions  multiply  and  become 
more  forceful  as  men  progress  In  knowledge, 
is  simply  a  fact  of  history.  Scepticism  and 
agnosticism  of  all  kinds,  which  arise  in  conten- 
tion with  these  ideas  and  in  reduction  of  their 
powers,  serve  only  to  correct  and  extend  them  ; 
never,  to  any  great  degree  or  for  any  long 
period,  to  uproot  them.  The  certainty  with 
which  every  phase  of  unbelief  becomes  ulti- 
mately a  foil  in  the  training-school  of  belief, 
and  so  passes  away,  is  a  most  significant  fact 
in  spiritual  philosophy.  That  men  push  for- 
ward, under  the  influence  of  spiritual  Ideas, 
and  develop  in  turn  these  Ideas,  as  they  ad- 
vance, is  as  universal  an  Induction  as  any  asso- 


134  Evolution  and  Religion. 

dated  with  human  history.  Over  against  it  is 
the  correlative  law  that  races  decay  in  the 
measure  in  which  they  drop  off  from  super- 
sensuous  conceptions,  and  become  sensuous  in 
their  lives.  The  sensuous  life  cannot  be  main- 
tained at  any  high  level  of  comfort  divorced 
from  the  spiritual  life.  In  other  words,  there 
is  an  insatiable  religious  impulse,  hidden  in  the 
human  mind,  which  is  sure  to  find  develop- 
ment, and  to  become  a  ruling  element  in  physi- 
cal and  social  experiences.  The  fact,  then,  of 
growth  in  a  spiritual  direction,  is  a  most  obvi- 
ous and  significant  one  as  rendered  in  the  life 
of  the  race. 

Not  much  less  plain  is  the  second  fact,  that 
this  higher  life  in  no  way  divorces  itself  from 
the  lower  life  from  which  it  springs,  but  takes 
it  up  into  itself.  This  is  seen  in  the  ruling, 
empirical  tendency  which  has  overtaken  our 
knowledge.  The  speculation  of  the  past,  de- 
taching itself  from  experience,  became  barren. 
Men  turned  back  in  weariness  to  things,  events, 
history,  and  immediately  thought  became  fruit- 
ful again.  Theory,  rooting  itself  in  the  soil, 
grew  sturdily  in  the  air,  and  the  several  forms 
of  intellectual  activity  assumed  toward  each 
other  nutritive  relations. 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     135 

The  same  is  true  In  art,  another  direction  in 
which  supersensuous  elements  freely  enter.  A 
romantic  or  an  ideal  tendency  soon  exhausts 
itself,  if  it  loses  its  governing  conditions  in 
physical  things.  It  then  gives  place  to  a  real- 
ism which  contents  itself  with  reproducing  the 
phenomenal  world.  Still  more  quickly  does 
this  become  barren  unless  it  leads  to  a  new 
evolution  of  inner  life.  The  outer  form  and 
inner  force  must  accompany  each  other  at 
every  step,  or  art  becomes  uninteresting  and 
uninstructive.  Its  mastery  is  found  in  spiritual 
impulses  expended  on  physical  things — re- 
straint and  concession  here,  concession  and 
coercion  there. 

The  religious  life  has  striven  very  pertina- 
ciously and  protractedly  to  divorce  itself  from 
the  world — to  leave  behind  it  its  physical  and 
social  terms,  and  many  even  of  its  intellectual 
conditions.  It  has  signally  failed.  The  sig- 
nificant features  of  our  time  are  found  in  the 
degree  in  which  faith  is  beginning  to  return 
upon  itself,  and  take  up  anew  its  neglected 
duties  ;  is  learning  to  resuscitate  and  rehabili- 
tate its  life,  making  it  healthy  and  rugged  on 
the  physical  and  social  sides  ;  to  correct  its 
thinking  by  the  facts  of  the  world,  restoring 


13^  Evolution  and  Religion. 

fully  its  connection  with  them  ;  and,  above  all, 
to  develop  its  affections  afresh,  man  with  man, 
class  with  class,  nation  with  nation,  drawing  all 
into  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  Our  experi- 
ence is  rendering  itself  in  terms  of  evolution 
with  advances,  retreats,  and  alternations. 
Higher  things  are  offered  to  us,  but  they  can 
be  attained  only  under  conditions  of  life  which 
we  may  easily  and  ignorantly  suffer  to  become 
sordid.  This  truth  receives  many  illustrations. 
When  the  principles  of  economics  began  to 
disclose  themselves,  men  felt  that  they  had  hit 
upon  laws  that  needed  only  to  be  followed  to 
secure  general  prosperity.  Here  were  ultimate 
truths,  and  ultimate  lines  of  conduct,  that  ad- 
mitted of  free  and  independent  development. 
An  experience,  prosperous  in  its  own  narrow 
circle,  far  from  showing  the  justness  of  this 
view,  has  led  us  forward  into  graver  perplex- 
ities, more  pervasive  and  difficult  problems, 
than  any  hitherto  encountered.  Capital,  in- 
stead of  being  harmoniously  at  work  with  labor, 
the  two  organized  evermore  completely  into  a 
common  life,  is  accumulated  in  great  amounts, 
and  confronts,  in  an  aggressive  and  hostile  at- 
titude, labor,  also  gathered  in  corresponding 
masses.     The  two,  compelled  to  support  each 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     137 

other,  do  it  with  reluctance  and  ill  will.  The 
need  of  more  comprehensive,  just,  and  gener- 
ous impulses  is  universally  felt.  They  must  be 
had,  or  the  whole  movement  is  threatened  with 
miscarriage  and  slow  decay.  A  social  life  that 
embraces  all,  has  its  rewards  for  all,  and  carries 
the  stimuli  of  contented  activity  to  the  lowest 
stratum  of  society,  is  a  necessity  of  the  com- 
mon strength,  and  so,  in  long  periods  and  over 
broad  surfaces,  of  the  individual  strength. 
Social  equilibrium  is  attainable  only  by  organic 
force  ;  and,  till  this  is  secured,  there  is  and  must 
be  a  restless  casting  about,  on  this  side  and  on 
that,  to  attain  or  to  retain  a  prosperity  not  pro- 
vided for  in  the  social  facts  themselves.  Society 
cannot  be  built,  in  any  portion  of  its  interests, 
firmly  and  restfully  on  economic  laws,  save  as 
these  are  united  with  ethical  laws  in  mutual 
guidance  and  restraint.  All  the  wants  of  men, 
as  one  complex  adjustment,  find  satisfaction 
toorether.  We  cannot  take  up  our  social  life 
piecemeal.  Every  gain  brings  new  relations 
and  new  dispositions.  The  movement  is 
strongly  evolutionary,  its  steps  successive  and 
closely  interdependent.  Every  satisfaction 
becomes  a  demand,  and  every  demand  an 
imperative  impulse. 


13B  Evolution  and  Religion. 

The  same  truth  is  equally  apparent  in  civic 
action.  It  is  easy  to  regard  free  government 
as  a  wide  and  universal  remedy  of  misrule.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  it  brings  new  dangers  and  im- 
poses fresh  duties.  The  problem  of  wise  gov- 
ernment is  not  escaped.  It  is  carried  over  to 
the  people  who  are  but  poorly  instructed  in  it, 
and  who  are  subject  to  many  influences  unfav- 
orable to  its  solution.  The  perplexities  of  a 
free  people  are  exceedingly  comprehensive,  are 
constantly  returning,  and  accept  correction 
only  by  many  modifications  over  a  wide  area 
through  long  periods.  The  chief  advantage 
of  liberty  lies  In  this  persistent  demand.  Eter- 
nal vigilance  is  the  price  of  liberty,  not  simply 
in  anticipation  of  its  overthrow,  but  as  provid- 
ing the  conditions  of  Its  successful  development. 
We  cannot  take  a  single  step  in  the  direction 
of  freedom  without  being  compelled  thereby 
to  take  many  more.  Each  new  equilibrium 
calls  for  an  extended  re-adjustment  of  the  social 
forces  which  take  part  in  It  ;  and  this  the  more, 
because  every  satisfied  desire  makes  way  for 
other  desires  which  stand  hidden  behind  it. 
The  variability  of  social  relations,  and  the  va- 
riability of  the  principles  applicable  to  them, 
are  the  most  conspicuous  facts  in  society. 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     139 

No  incentives  are  more  mutually  corrective, 
upward  and  downward,  than  spiritual  ones. 
They  all  push  forward  to  and  converge  in  the 
coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  The  pe- 
titions of  the  Lord's  Prayer  are  so  few  because 
they  are  so  comprehensive,  and  because,  by 
this  comprehensiveness,  they  lead  us  straight 
on  through  a  thousand  secondary  desires  that 
might  bewilder  and  mislead  us,  and  plant  us  at 
the  centre  of  hope.  It  is  better  to  go  back 
from  this  centre  to  each  separate  necessity 
than  to  be  embarrassed  by  it  as  we  approach 
the  centre  itself.  It  is  a  sense  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven  that  defines  for  us  the  con- 
ditions of  life,  and  their  true  relation  to  each 
other. 

But  let  this  sense  of  a  Kingdom  be  with  us, 
and  how  rapidly  it  spreads  over  the  entire 
social  field,  with  a  sharp  decisive  discrimination 
between  actions  !  Nothing  is  untouched  by  it. 
The  least  as  well  as  the  largest  interest  is 
ruled  under  it  into  order.  The  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  is  a  physical,  intellectual,  social,  and 
spiritual  product.  It  adjusts  all  things  and 
persons  to  each  other.  Like  music,  it  cannot 
bear  a  discord  anywhere,  and  therefore  the 
spirit  really  open  to  this  impulse  is  indifferent 


I40  Evolution  and  Relioion. 


^ 


to  nothing,  is  put   in   possession  of  the  entire 
world  for  constructive,  spiritual  purposes. 

A  great  many  Christian  men  and  all  Chris- 
tian nations  quietly  accept  such  a  thing  as  war, 
but  It  Is  because  they  have  not  fully  felt  that 
central  power  of  a  higher  life  which  Is  drawing 
them  out  of  chaos  Into  creation.  When  the 
creative  Impulse  shall  unfold  Itself  a  little  far- 
ther, they  will  feel  that  poverty,  passion,  vio- 
lence In  every  form  and  wherever  present,  are 
opposed  to  It ;  that  war,  In  which  men  dash  In 
pieces  organic  construction  already  achieved, 
and  kindle  fresh  dissension,  Is  most  antithetic 
to  that  Kingdom — a  visible  break  from  under 
Its  gracious  and  growing  processes.  When 
the  mind.  In  any  good  measure,  becomes  Christ- 
like,  and  has  cast  upon  It,  as  Its  own  personal 
burden,  the  redemption  of  the  world, — Its  phys- 
ical poverty,  its  intellectual  discord,  Its  spirit- 
ual destitution — It  will  find  Itself  in  the  midst 
of  evolutionary  forces  of  Infinite  variety,  gain- 
ing, losing,  contending  In  all  ways  In  the  strug- 
gle of  life.  It  will  be  compelled  to  go  over 
many  times  the  barren  spaces  which  religion 
has  left  behind  It,  and  provide  for  all  the  vir- 
tues, all  the  enjoyments,  all  the  varied  Impulses 
of  manifold  powers  and  rich  experiences. 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     141 

If  we  look  broadly  at  human  history,  it  is 
not  an  unsafe  induction,  nor  one  without  great 
significance,  that  a  satisfaction  of  wants  among 
men  opens  up  a  wider  and  higher  circle  of 
wants  ;  and  that  these  later  and  larger  wants 
are  also  more  harmonious  between  man  and 
man,  more  controlling  downward  of  the  strife 
beneath  them,  more  uplifting  toward  the  circle 
which  still  lies  above  them.  This  means  that 
a  spiritual  evolution  embraces  us  whose  direc- 
tion we  can  discern,  and  whose  several  stages 
are  eainingr  hold  on  our  conscious,  social  life. 

Spiritual  evolution  has  its  own  forms  of  ata- 
vism. If  a  nation  is  brought  into  the  field  of  a 
higher  life,  and  turns  back  in  luxury  and  de- 
bauch on  a  lower  life  ;  if  it  strives  to  appropri- 
ate the  gains  of  growth,  not  as  conditions  for 
farther  growth,  but  for  immediate,  sensual 
pleasure,  it  loses  its  footing  shortly,  and  sinks 
into  a  lower  stage.  Each  advance  gives  occa- 
sion to  new  social  claims  which  we  must  pro- 
ceed to  meet,  or  they  involve  us  in  dissension, 
weakness,  and  regression. 

The  essential  features  of  evolution  are  pres- 
ent in  the  spiritual  history  of  the  world.  Each 
succeeding  stage  is  more  comprehensive,  more 
organic,  than  the  previous  one.     The  complet- 


142  Evolution  and  Religion. 

ion  of  each  movement  is  in  that  which  follows 
it.  Every  movement  involves  so  delicate  a 
poise  of  forces  that  it  must  pass  on  to  a  higher 
movement  or  it  loses  its  own  equilibrium  and 
perishes.  The  law  and  the  prophets  must  be 
fulfilled  in  something  superior  to  themselves, 
or  they  squander  their  own  wealth. 

Under  this  conception,  so  full  of  light,  yet 
a  light  so  subtile  and  changeable  that  each 
man  must  catch  for  himself  its  flittino-  forms, 
we  feel  assured  of  the  general  spiritual  trend 
of  the  world.  We  seem  also  to  be  able  to  dis- 
cover the  part  which  certain  painful  phases  of 
spiritual  life,  offering  themselves,  first  as  great 
aims,  then  as  obstacles,  and  later  as  failures, 
have  really  subserved.  The  development  of 
Christian  dogma  presents  an  example  suited 
to  our  purpose  as  a  very  distinguishable,  em- 
phatic, and  painstaking  form  of  effort,  and 
one  very  familiar  to  us. 

What  we  have  to  see,  and  what  we  need  to 
show,  under  this  conception  of  evolution  is, 
that  the  doctrinal  beliefs  that  have  been  cur- 
rent at  any  period  have  been  normal  to  its 
intellectual  and  social  condition,  have  been 
productive  of  progress,  and,  through  the  evils 
they  have  developed,  have  ultimately  opened 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     143 

the  way  to  more  adequate  statements.  The 
lower  belief  has  been  a  preparation  for  the 
higher  belief,  and,  in  the  very  resistance  it  has 
offered  to  it,  has  become  a  means  to  its  more 
complete  development  and  its  more  general 
acceptance.  The  spiritual  growth  has  lain  be- 
tween the  two,  in  their  action  and  reaction  on 
each  other. 

Take,  as  a  first  example,  the  doctrine  of  sin, 
with  its  doom  of  endless  punishment.  The 
belief  assumed  for  many  centuries  a  form  truly 
appalling,  and  is  now  pushed  aside  by  the 
thoughtful  and  sympathetic  mind  with  strong 
moral  revulsion.  Yet  it  is  perfectly  plain  that 
this  dogma  has  played  an  important  part  in  the 
development  of  society,  and  has  helped  it  up- 
ward to  its  advanced  ethical  standing.  The 
better  opinion  has  been  born  of  the  inferior 
one,  and,  in  legitimate  descent,  has  replaced 
it.  The  education  of  man  proceeds  at  no 
point  more  slowly  than  in  attaining  a  pro- 
portionate and  just  estimate  of  all  forms  of 
offence.  It  is  the  life-long  discipline  of  the 
individual,  and  the  unending  lesson  of  society. 
The  schoolinor  of  civil  and  criminal  law  for 
many  centuries  has  been  this  very  thing — a 
better  definition  of  injuries  and  a  more  ade- 


144  Evolution  and  Religion. 


<:5 


quate  apprehension  of  penalties.  Action  can 
only  become  ethical — a  method  seen  and 
enforced  by  the  individual  himself — as  the 
mind  is  awakened  by  the  most  varied  and  pro- 
tracted experience  to  all  the  bearings  of  con- 
duct, and  is  made  able  to  meet  them  with  a 
complexity  of  thought  equal  to  their  own 
complexity. 

The  conscience  Is  more  easily  awakened  by 
the  idea  of  sin,  an  offence  committed  against 
God,  than  by  a  violation  of  the  moral  law,  ac- 
tion faulty  In  reference  to  one's  self  or  one's 
neighbor.  Indeed,  down  to  our  own  time,  the 
most  intelligent  men  experience  great  diffi- 
culty In  conceiving  the  true  character  of  Injuries 
inflicted  on  nations  other  than  their  own.  The 
moral  law  suffers  suspension  in  so  remote  a 
field.  A  sin  against  God,  like  an  offence 
against  a  chief,  In  the  earliest  period  easily 
alarmed  the  guilty  spirit.  The  sinner  had  no 
difficulty  In  conceiving  the  bad  consequences 
which  were  likely  to  follow  from  the  sin. 
Hence  In  awakening  and  deepening  the  sense 
of  wrongfulness,  and  of  Its  correlative,  rightful- 
ness,— the  sense  on  whose  delicacy  and  justness 
all  later  training  was  to  depend  —  this  magnify- 
ing of  sin,  as  a  wrong  directed  against  God, 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     145 

became  a  primary  term.  The  sensitive  con- 
science, for  its  own  sake  and  for  the  sake  of 
others,  enhanced  the  consequences  of  sin.  It 
secured  by  this  means  its  reactionary  spring 
towards  obedience. 

An  essential  step  in  this  process  was  dwell- 
ing on  punishment.  In  the  early  history  of 
men,  punishment  is  far  more  the  measure  of 
transgression  than  any  insight  into  the  offence 
itself.  An  injury  to  a  superior,  followed  by  a 
sudden  and  severe  penalty,  was  well  under- 
stood ;  an  injury  to  an  inferior,  followed  by  no 
rebuke,  was  lightly  thought  of.  As  the  pun- 
ishment of  sin  was  not  obvious  nor  immediate, 
the  mind,  in  the  enhancement  of  trangression, 
made  the  penalty  the  greater  and  the  more  en- 
during, till  the  doctrines  of  eternal  punishment 
and  of  purgatory  were  fully  developed.  It 
was  first  the  moral  training,  and  then  the  moral 
pressure,  of  these  dogmas  that  led  men  to  a 
deeper  study  of  the  entire  problem. 

Some  have  been  led,  very  mistakenly,  to 
regard  these  doctrines  as  priest-craft,  devices 
conceived  and  kept  alive  for  ends  of  personal 
control.  Men  are  not  so  readily  led  as  this 
rendering  of  events  implies,  nor  are  the  lead- 
ers of  men  so  much  disposed  to  mislead  them. 


146  Evolution  and  Religion. 

Leaders  and  led  necessarily  rest  their  intel- 
lectual construction  of  events  on  much  the 
same  basis.  The  conscious  perversion  of  ideas 
for  an  ulterior  object  is  very  slight  when  com- 
pared with  the  great  flow  of  moral  forces  in 
men's  minds  which  makes  this  perversion  pos- 
sible. When  leaders  cease  to  believe  what 
they  teach,  they  will  soon  cease  to  inspire  belief. 
Belief  in  the  popular  mind  and  in  the  priestly 
mind  is  essentially  one.  Like  people,  like 
priest ;  like  priest,  like  people,  are  aphorisms 
thoroughly  supported  by  experience.  The  re- 
straints which  attended  in  action  on  the  preach- 
ing of  the  doctrine  of  future  punishment  was, 
to  those  who  taught  it,  an  additional  evidence 
of  its  truth.  President  Edwards  enforced  the 
doctrine  in  a  most  unequivocal  form,  and  that 
not  simply  in  the  presence  of  intelligence,  but 
as  the  fruit  of  intelligence — as  one  factor  in  a 
consistent  system  of  doctrine. 

The  belief  was  associated  with  other  beliefs 
which  helped  to  make  it  rational.  God  was  not 
simply  holy,  he  was  the  ruler  of  the  world,  and 
was  involved  in  all  the  claims  of  justice.  Not 
till  the  idea  of  justice  had  gained  more  ade- 
quate statement  could  that  of  beneficence  find 
free    entrance.      The    administration    of    the 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     147 

spiritual  world  was  inextricably  tangled  up 
with  all  the  embarrassments  which  beset  human 
law.  To  launch  out  on  ethical  forces,  acting 
by  themselves  and  supreme,  implied  a  boldness 
of  thought  far  beyond  the  experience  and 
habits  of  men's  minds.  Sin  was  measured  not 
from  its  own  centre,  the  mind  and  heart  of 
the  sinner,  but  from  the  centre  of  the  spiritual 
universe  ;  by  its  remoteness  from  the  mind 
of  God  ;  by  the  injury  it  was  thought  to  inflict 
on  his  government.  Its  impinging  power  was 
magnified  beyond  all  reason,  and  so  the  re- 
sistance to  it  was  made  to  assume  the  same 
awful  nature.  The  ultimate  victory  of  that 
which  is  good  was  not  assured,  in  and  of  itself, 
and  hence  the  desperate  conflict  with  evil  must 
be  waged  in  every  possible  way.  In  morals  as 
in  medicine  the  heroic  remedy  has  often  arisen 
from  a  total  misconception  of  the  nature  of 
the  disease.  A  sin  does  not  gain  magnitude 
by  being  committed  against  God  ;  the  reverse 
rather.  The  conception  of  God  is  so  remote 
from  the  mind  transgressing  as  to  occasion  but 
a  slight  shock,  the  sin  itself  is  so  enclosed  in 
God's  patience,  in  his  remedial  processes,  as 
to  endanger  nothing.  It  is  an  incident  of  the 
spiritual  growth  which  he  is  pushing  forward. 


14^  Evolution  and  Religion. 

Its  real  measure  and  real  mischief  are  found 
in  its  conscious  presence  and  perverting  power 
within  the  soul  itself.  We  have  to  do  with 
the  man  himself,  rather  than  with  the  govern- 
ment of  God  existing  beyond  him  and  putting 
upon  him  crushing  liabilities.  Our  liberty  is 
of  the  largest  order,  a  liberty  to  help  the  man 
in  all  ways  to  carry  forward  the  living  proc- 
esses which  inhere  in  his  own  thoucrhts. 

The  doctrine  of  sin  sprang  spontaneously 
from  the  crude  efforts  of  the  mind  to  awaken 
itself  to  its  wide  relations  in  a  spiritual  world, 
and  it  subserved  a  vital  purpose  in  this  con- 
nection. It  marked  a  migration  toward  and 
into  the  unseen  world.  The  theory  of  eternal 
punishment  is  fitted  to  subject  minds,  inert  to 
spiritual  motives,  to  urgent  incentives,  and  to 
induce  religious  activity.  It  suppHes  by  mag- 
nitude what  it  lacks  in  immediateness.  It 
awakens  attention  and  commands  effort.  It 
is  a  stringent  appeal  to  moral  quality.  Insight, 
voluntary  effort,  play  but  a  small  part  at  any 
one  time,  in  social  renovation.  A  great  accu- 
mulation of  organic  conditions,  of  historic 
forces,  renders  any  immediate  or  considerable 
transformation  impossible.  Yet  as  personal 
action  is  that  in  which  each  man's  power  and 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     149 

responsibility  centre,  it  becomes  of  the  utmost 
moment  to  call  out  personal  effort.  No  means 
are  to  be  spared  in  doing  this.  The  physician 
finds  occasion  to  do  all  that  in  him  lies  to  rally 
the  energies  of  his  patient,  and  to  sustain  the 
outer  remedy  by  an  inner  impulse.  The  doc- 
trine of  future  punishment  is  a  sudden  spas- 
modic effort  to  deepen  spiritual  sensibilities. 

Voluntary  activities,  though  comparatively 
Insignificant  at  any  one  moment,  assume  chief 
importance  when  long  periods  are  under  con- 
sideration. If  we  were  to  compare  the  varie- 
ties, at  any  one  time  appearing  in  vegetable 
or  animal  life,  with  the  great  bulk  of  that  life, 
they  would  seem  very  insignificant ;  yet  these 
varieties  are  the  determining  features  in  refer- 
ence to  the  future.  They  are  pivotal  points 
In  the  creative  movement.  Much  the  same 
importance  in  spiritual  evolution  attaches  to 
any  new  activity  in  men's  thoughts.  Both  in 
its  coming  and  its  going,  in  its  formation  and  In 
Its  correction,  in  its  excesses  and  in  its  defects, 
it  serves  to  define  the  lines  of  progress  and  to 
renew  Its  Incentives. 

Moreover,  the  terror  of  the  terrific  motive 
Is  greatly  reduced  by  the  dry,  obdurate  temper 
to  which  it  is  addressed.      A  few  sensitive  and 


ISO  Evolution  and  Religion. 

exalted  natures  have  been  greatly  harrowed 
and  distressed  by  this  excess  of  motive,  but 
the  oreat  mass  of  men  have  had  sensibilities 
suited  to  the  goad.  The  lack  of  imagination, 
the  inertness  of  a  sensuous  life,  have  left  them 
at  ease,  as  much  at  ease  as  the  facts  in  the 
case  could  well  tolerate.  One  may  say  that 
the  magnitude  of  the  motive  was  the  direct 
product  of  the  exigency.  Men  increased  the 
sense  of  danger  because  no  slight  sense  suf- 
ficed. The  cruelty  of  the  scourge  was  due 
to  the  callous  quality  of  the  skin.  They  sub- 
stituted physical  pain  for  spiritual  failure 
because  they  understood  the  one  and  failed 
to  conceive  the  other.  We  do  not  suppose 
this  exaggeration  to  have  been  a  conscious 
device  of  teachers,  but  instinctive  in  the  minds 
of  teachers  and  of  taught  alike.  Men  project 
their  shadows  in  a  gigantic  and  obscuring  way 
on  the  path  before  them  because  the  sun  lies 
low  behind  them.  Let  it  be  in  full  strength 
overhead,  and  the  shadows  disappear. 

These  conceptions  of  future  punishment 
alter  their  form  as  the  need  of  them  passes 
away.  The  unduly  irritated  sensibility  serves 
at  length  to  correct  the  doctrine  by  giving  the 
conditions  for  a  better  understanding  of  the 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     151 

problem.  When  the  mind  comes  to  see  that 
the  chief  penalties  of  ill-doing  are  enclosed  in 
the  ill-doing  itself  ;  that  the  ill-doing  is  ill- 
doine  because  of  these  inevitable  evils  it  con- 
tains  ;  that  no  extraneous  physical  inflictions 
can  materially  alter  the  evil  facts  but  simply 
adds  itself  to  them  ;  when  the  mind  grasps 
the  problem  of  sin  and  evil  in  its  own  inherent 
terms  as  a  spiritual  and  vital  one,  then  these 
physical  forms  of  punishment  are  felt  to  be 
irrelevant  to  it  and  disappear.  When  the  sun 
is  up,  the  clouds  which  have  enveloped  the 
earth  and  kept  it  warm  are  burned  away. 
The  spiritual  transition  must  be  made,  but 
it  must  be  made  by  a  stage  in  growth,  a 
sequence  unfolding  its  reasons  from  within 
itself. 

Chief  among  these  dispelling  powers  is  a 
better  conception  of  the  character  of  God, 
one  less  human  and  more  divine,  one  bereft 
of  passion  and  pervaded  by  love,  one  in  which 
the  gentle  processes  of  growth  take  the  place 
of  an  inflexible  and  barren  formula  of  justice. 
The  entire  movement  is  evolutionary.  First 
terms  lead  to  later  ones,  and  later  ones  arise 
in  correction  and  enlargement  of  earlier  ones. 
*  A  distinct  recognition  of  sin,  even  though  it 


152  Evolution  and  Religfion. 


^5 


be  accompanied  by  extravagant  exaggeration, 
is  an  essential  step  in  coming  to  a  true  know- 
ledge of  our  relations  to  the  spiritual  world. 
In  the  criminal,  we  regard  an  aroused  consci- 
ence, which  makes  the  crime  darken  down 
the  entire  horizon,  as  a  wholesome  manifes- 
tation, and  one  which  is  likely  to  be  followed 
by  a  more  sober  and  just  estimate  of  life. 

In  this  direction  have  lain  many  theories  of 
the  atonement.  A  parent  may  be  compelled 
to  make  a  difficulty  of  forgiveness,  lest  a  too 
ready  relenting  should  lighten,  in  the  mind  of 
the  child,  the  sense  of  the  offence.  The  formal 
difficulty  expresses  to  the  uncultivated  mind 
the  actual  difficulty.  Forgiveness  until  seventy 
times  seven  is  so  high  a  law,  one  so  purely 
spiritual,  one  that  must  be  obeyed  in  so  trans- 
cendent a  temper,  that  it  is  inapplicable  to  a 
blind  and  sordid  spirit.  It  must  be  climbed 
up  to  and  then  rejoiced  In.  The  justiciary 
mechanism  between  man  and  God,  which  has 
characterized  theological  theories  of  the  atone- 
ment, has  delayed  the  approach  of  the  sinner, 
and  put  upon  him  a  sense  of  guilt  and  danger 
that  has  had  regenerative  power.  It  has  been 
an  essential  step  in  disclosing  the  dividing 
nature  of  sin  and  Its  damacrinor  results.     The 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.     153 

fundamental  antagonism  of  sin  and  holiness 
must,  in  some  way,  lay  hold  of  the  mind,  and 
if  it  is  not  laying  hold  of  it  on  the  spiritual 
side,  it  must  do  so  on  the  legal,  formal  side. 
The  true  facility  of  forgiveness,  its  abiding  fa- 
cility, are  hidden  from  the  sinner  as  a  sinner, 
and  oueht  to  be,  so  loner  as  the  mind  is  over- 
balanced  to  the  side  of  transgression.  It  is 
only  the  spirit  that  is  measurably  cleansed  of 
sin  that  can  find  a  still  further  cleansing  in 
the  sweet  sense  of  foro^iveness.     The  blood  of 

o 

Christ  cleanseth  from  all  sin  is  an  enforcement 
suited  to  one  who  in  the  darkness  of  an  indo- 
lent and  indifferent  temper,  or  in  a  mood  of 
mind  full  of  temptation,  would  carry  with  him 
habitually  unclean  hands  and  an  unclean  heart. 
The  successive  theories  of  the  atonement  have 
been  the  spontaneous  products  of  a  definite 
spiritual  culture,  have  wrought  favorably  on 
the  minds  of  those  to  whom  they  have  been 
addressed,  and  have  finally  given  way  before 
a  deeper  spiritual  insight  which  they  have 
helped  to  evoke.  One  climbs  a  mountain. 
Each  succeeding  step  enables  him  to  give  a 
wider,  more  accurate,  more  stimulating  con- 
struction to  the  landscape.  The  soul's  later 
vision  is  a  bird's  eye  view  of  what  now  lies  be- 


154  Evolution  and  Religion. 

neath  it.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  drawinor 
near  to  God  is  rising-  above  the  world,  and  re- 
ducing its  obstructions  and  inequalities  to  their 
lowest  terms. 

The  same  considerations  are  applicable  to 
the  enforced  authority  of  the  Church,  and  to 
the  enforced  authority  of  the  Scriptures.  Man 
must  be  subject  to  authority.  The  assertion 
of  authority  is  the  assertion  of  law,  and  the 
assertion  of  law  is  the  cardinal  declaration  of 
all  worlds.  The  highest  attainment  is  the 
inner  discernment  of  the  laws  of  life  and  the 
enforcement  of  these  laws  by  the  spirit  on  it- 
self in  glad  liberty.  But  this  is  the  end,  not 
the  beginning ;  the  victory,  not  the  struggle 
which  precedes  it.  We  must  cover,  in  a  pain- 
ful experience,  the  period  in  which  evil  seems 
good  and  good  seems  evil  ;  in  which  a  pure 
and  righteous  law  carries  with  it  a  sense  of 
bondage — the  period  in  which  one  is  losing  his 
life  not  winning  it.  This  period  of  partial  light 
and  prevailing  darkness  is  a  long  and  check- 
ered one  in  the  growth  of  races.  There  are 
still  few. who  habitually  and  profoundly  feel 
that  a  life  of  pleasure,  though  ordered  with 
utmost  prudence,  is  immeasurably  inferior  to  a 
life  of   service,   though  that   service   may  be 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.      155 

severe  and  often  times  unfruitful.  The  mind 
is  not  ready  to  cast  itself  unreservedly  on  God 
and  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  and  to  find 
therein  its  inheritance  of  strength.  A  spirit- 
ually subjugated  world  is  still  to  us  not  so 
beautiful  and  enjoyable  a  world  as  one  in 
which  we  submit  ourselves,  more  or  less,  to 
wayward  impulses.  Transcendent  things  are 
yet  veiled  from  us  as  by  a  mist  that  lies  low 
about  us.  The  universal  welfare  of  the  entire 
human  household  does  not  appeal  as  strongly 
to  us  as  those  many  delightful  things  which  we 
can  eather  about  our  own  homes.  We  can- 
not  project  the  blessing  near  us  outward  till  it 
falls  upon  the  whole  earth. 

This  period  of  estrangement  must  have 
its  own  motives.  In  it  the  spirit  is  not  a 
sufficient  authority  unto  itself.  Some  more 
extraneous  authority  must  be  set  up  in  con- 
nection with  which  the  sense  of  law  can  be 
called  out.  The  spiritual  child  must  have  its 
spiritual  nurture.  The  church  collectively,  as 
in  the  Catholic  system,  may  take  upon  itself 
this  brooding  office.  An  aggregate  greatness, 
matured  by  a  thousand  processes  of  growth, 
corrected  by  an  ever  enlarging  experience, 
tempered  by  the  goodness  of  many  generations 


156  Evolution  and  Religion. 

of  good  men,  comes  to  be  represented  in  the 
Church.      The  Church  is  thus   the  mother  of 
men.      This    concentration   and  expression  of 
authority   in  the   Church  was  as  inevitable  as 
it  was  desirable.       Many  minds,  emancipated 
from  it,  return  to  it  with  an  insatiable  loneino-. 
In  it  the  best  and  truest  convictions  take  to 
themselves  a  working  form.      To  the  masses 
of  men  who  have    no  sufficient  hold   on   the 
truth,  who   cannot   make   it  a  controllino-  and 
comforting  law,  a  fellowship  of  faith,  infused 
with  the  life  of  those  who  are  leaders  amono- 
men,    is    the    very    best    substitute.     What   is 
wanting  on  the  intellectual  side  is  more  than 
made  up  on  the  emotional  side.      Our  spiritual 
experience  is  enveloped  in  the  universal  experi- 
ence,  and  we  often  times  do  well    to  submit 
ourselves,  at  many  points,  to  that  experience. 
If  we  set  up  a  rational  law  in  a  too  personal 
way,  we  wander  off    into  obscure  places  and 
lose  the  immediate  incentives  of  life.      There 
is  a  spiritual  safety  in  marching  with  the  great 
army  of    men.      The   difficulty  encounters  us 
when    we   undertake    to   carry   forward    these 
conjoint   symbols  and   maintain  the  vitality  of 
these    common    rites.     A    great    organization 
becomes  inert  in  the  measure  of  its  magnitude, 


pro^ 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.      157 

and  so  what  we  gain  in  diffusion  we  lose  in 

eress. 

It  was  this  fact  which  occasioned  and  jus- 
tified Protestantism.  Protestantism  was  the 
breaking  away  of  vigorous  minds  from  the 
bondage  of  belief — an  effort  to  renew  the 
march  of  ideas.  As  the  authority  of  the  Church 
was  denied  by  it,  and  as  men  were  still  far 
from  finding  sufficient  authority  and  unity  by 
each  one's  hold  on  the  truth,  the  Scriptures 
were  assigned  a  central  and  controlhng  posi- 
tion. But  the  Scriptures  remain  a  dead  letter 
unless  they,  in  turn,  are  enforced  by  each 
man's  conscience,  or  gain  a  new  interpretation 
and  leadership  in  a  church  organization. 
Protestantism  made  for  liberty  of  thought  in 
the  most  active  minds,  but  these,  in  preaching 
the  Gospel  as  they  conceived  it,  found  occa- 
sion to  fall  back  on  the  old  method  of  a  creed, 
an  embodied  discipline,  as  the  suitable  train- 
ing of  the  people. 

The  Puritans  are  reproached  for  being  so 
slow  in  seeing  and  accepting  the  doctrine  of 
religious  liberty.  We  forget  that  the  view 
backward  in  religious  faith  is  not  the  same  as 
the  view  forward  ;  that  the  discovery  of  truth 
and  the  enforcement  of  truth  carry  with  them  a 


158  Evolution  and  Religion. 

difference  of  method.  The  spirit,  in  its  move- 
ment forward,  must  claim  and  defend  the  right 
of  search.  When  it  comes,  in  turn,  to  propa- 
gate its  beliefs,  it  naturally  asserts  their  author- 
ity, and  puts  limitations  on  liberty.  Those 
who  are  sluggish  or  dull  or  timid  must  be  pro- 
vided with  stimulus  and  light  and  shelter. 
The  free,  bold  mind  has  one  law,  the  tram- 
melled, dependent  mind  another  law.  Leader- 
ship is  supplemented  by  a  desire  for  guidance. 
Religious  liberty  is  applicable  only  to  religious 
life.  It  is  a  suitable  and  enjoyable  prerogative 
only  in  connection  with  powers  that  demand 
it  and  can  use  it. 

It  is  not  stranee  then  that  men  are  slower 
in  conceding  than  in  claiming  religious  liberty. 
They  claim  it  in  behalf  of  the  instinctive 
energy  of  a  few  minds  ;  they  withhold  it  in 
behalf  of  the  disciplinary  methods  applicable 
to  the  mass  of  men.  When  liberty  is  weak- 
ness, it  is  not  well  to  be  free.  When  it  is  the 
loss  of  powers  and  not  the  use  of  powers,  it 
becomes  the  disintegration,  not  the  integration, 
of  life.  Protestantism  by  virtue  of  its  liberty, 
has  suffered  reproach  on  this  side  as  well  as 
on  the  other.  It  has  been  looked  upon  as  an 
insufferable  dissolving  away  of  religious  ties ; 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.      159 

a  breaking  up  of  the  Catholic  Church  into 
innumerable  and  contemptible  sects.  While 
we  must  yield  something  to  individual  enter- 
prise in  exploiting  the  truth,  we  must  also 
yield  something  to  organic  force  in  propaga- 
ting it. 

Much  has  to  be  learned  at  this  point.  Many 
are  disturbed  at  the  divisions  among  Christians. 
They  are  anxious  to  secure  both  unity  and  lib- 
erty. Liberty  has  destroyed  unity.  How  shall 
that  unity  be  restored  ?  Certainly  not  by  a 
sharp  return  to  the  stage  of  discipline  ;  by  re- 
establishing a  creed  and  a  ritual  the  same  for 
all.  This  is  to  look  backward  not  forward. 
This  is  to  provoke  a  second  time  the  attacks 
of  liberty.  The  only  unity  that  is  possible  to 
us  is  a  growing  unity  of  temper,  a  unity  that 
converts  discipline  into  a  wider,  unrestrained 
yet  restrained,  search  for  truth  and  for  righteous- 
ness. That  narrow  discipline  which  is  the 
nurture  of  immature  powers  is  necessarily 
transitional  and  transient.  The  singleness  of 
purpose,  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  must  confer 
unity  and  bring  suitable  guidance  and  con- 
straint to  the  uses  of  truth.  We  cannot  win 
unity  by  narrowing  down  belief  into  the  skele- 
ton of  a  creed,  but   by  widening   it  out,  till  its 


i6o  Evolution  and  Relieion. 


in- 


essential and  unessential  centres,  its  more  per- 
manent and  more  variable  parts,  become  plain 
to  us.  Truth  is  ultimately  instrumental  in  the 
processes  of  life.  Wide  spiritual,  social  life 
will  at  once  draw  it  into  its  own  currents  and 
correct  it. 

Authority,  like  government  in  the  household, 
can  only  be  transferred  slowly  from  without 
inward.  We  are  right  when  we  do  not  in  any 
way  check  this  transfer ;  when  we  maintain 
authority,  external  if  it  must  be,  internal  if  it 
may  be.  Religious  evolution  is  issuing  in  a 
slow  uncovering  of  the  true  seats  of  authority 
in  the  soul  itself,  and  in  bringing  forward 
this  eovernment  with  such  insio^ht  and  such 
submission  as  to  make  it  adequate  in  the  indi- 
vidual life,  and  sufficient  for  the  ends  of  organ- 
ization in  the  collective  life.  A  collective  life 
whose  freedom  takes  nothing  from  Its  force, 
and  whose  force  has  ceased  to  be  a  burden  on 
its  freedom.  Is  the  goal  towards  which  we  are 
pushing.  As  the  great  mass  of  men  are  still 
in  a  stage  of  nurture,  liberty,  for  the  most  part, 
lies  beyond  them.  It  Is  something  they  are  to 
be  aided  in  winning,  rather  than  something  to 
be  laid  at  their  feet.  We  suffer  the  confusion 
of    conflicting    interests    Incident    to  different 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.      i6i 

powers.  Our  camp  Is  like  the  camp  of  Jacob, 
which  could  not  be  hurried  in  its  march  because 
the  children  were  tender  and  the  flocks  and 
the  herds  with  young.  The  assertion  of  au- 
thority and  the  casting  off  of  authority  have 
alike  been  vital  processes  in  the  church.  They 
have  taken  form  under  experience  and  under 
the  pressure  of  special  exigencies.  We  cannot 
expect  very  much  to  alter  this  movement.  We 
can  expect  to  make  it,  in  different  degrees, 
rapid,  useful,  and  instructive.  We  guide  our 
boat  down  the  river  ;  there  is  much  in  guid- 
ance, though  the  direction,  the  safety  and  the 
dancrer  of  our  course  are  determined  for  us. 
Men  slowly  come  into  the  light,  and  the  light 
gives  new  conditions  of  activity.  The  inspira- 
tion of  the  Bible  is  a  substitute  for  the  insight 
of  the  Church,  and  both  for  the  Spirit  of  Truth 
within  the  soul  itself. 

Perhaps  no  doctrine  in  the  Christian  creed 
has  called  out  more  ingenious  and  purely  spec- 
ulative thought  than  that  of  the  Trinity.  No 
doctrine  more  completely  transcends  our  data 
than  this  doctrine.  What  is  the  significance 
of  this  protracted,  and  often  times  bitter,  dis- 
cussion, looked  on  as  one  term  in  the  evolution 
of  spiritual  life   among   men  ?     While  our  in- 


i62  Evolution  and  Religion. 

terpretation  may  fall  sensibly  short  of  the  mark^ 
it  is  plain  that  these  discussions  have  not  been 
as  superfluous  and  unprofitable  as  many  are 
inclined  to  regard  them.  They  constitute  a 
very  important  part  of  the  means  by  which  the 
mystery  and  greatness  of  the  spiritual  world 
and  of  the  being  of  God  have  been  impressed 
upon  the  minds  of  men.  The  provoking 
cause  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  would 
seem  to  have  been  the  doctrine  of  the  divinity 
of  Christ.  The  very  obvious  limitations  which 
the  incarnation  brought  with  it,  rendered  it 
very  difficult  to  include,  in  the  personality  of 
Christ,  the  entire  life  of  God.  There  was  a 
demand  for  a  Godhead  more  comprehensive, 
more  transcendental,  than  this  assertion  would 
imply.  There  must  be  some  other  adjustment 
of  the  divinity  of  Christ  with  the  being  of  God. 
In  removal  of  this  difficulty,  and  of  the  further 
difficulty  of  the  personality  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
there  sprang  up  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity. 

If  we  turn  to  the  germ  of  the  movement,  the 
divinity  of  Christ,  that  doctrine  Is  evidently 
the  product  of  an  effort  to  magnify  and  en- 
force and  render  determinate  the  revelation  in 
Christ.  Looked  at  spiritually,  Christ  Is  the 
way,  the  truth,  and  the  life,  by  being  the  truth. 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.      163 

The  truth  Is  the  connecting  and  the  germinal 
term.  Every  one  that  is  of  the  truth  heareth 
my  voice.  It  is  not  easy  to  understand  how 
Christ  can  be  anything  to  us  aside  from  the 
truth,  or  beyond  the  truth.  The  truth  is  the 
one  door  between  us  and  spiritual  things.  It 
is  by  that  door  we  enter  in.  The  difficulty 
with  an  unspiritual  nature  lies  in  the  door.  It 
does  not  swing  easily  or  widely  open  to  let  the 
light  into  the  spirit  or  the  spirit  into  the  light. 
The  spiritual  force  of  the  world  is  hidden  from 
the  mind.  It  walks  in  the  shadow  of  a  great 
unplerced  wall.  Christ  became  a  revelation 
by  becoming  a  wide  doorway  of  spiritual  truth. 
The  mind,  still  slow  of  perception  and  with  a 
vision  of  short  range,  instead  of  looking  through 
Christ  into  the   Kino^dom  of   Heaven  looks  at 

o 

him,  makes  of  him  a  mystery  and  begins  to 
busy  itself  with  his  divine  nature.  The  atten- 
tion is  thus  diverted  from  a  glorious  revelation 
to  an  insolvable  and  a  relatively  unfruitful 
speculation. 

The  possibility  of  the  dogma  of  the  Divinity 
of  Christ  arises  from  the  undue  separation 
which  men  have  made  in  thousrht  between  the 
world  and  God,  and  from  the  ease  with  which 
they  lay  aside  physical  facts  as  not  truly  ex- 


164         Evolution  and  Religion. 

pressive  of  the  forces  which  lie  back  of  them. 
A  mystery  in  things — as  in  the  doctrine  of 
trans-substantiation — is  thus  made  better  than 
inner  lieht.  The  sound  of  the  word  is  more 
than  its  meaning  ;  the  image  than  the  truth  it 
reflects.  It  is  not  easy  to  understand  how  the 
personality  of  Christ  should  differ  in  its  physi- 
cal elements  or  in  its  intellectual  constitution 
from  the  personality  of  man  ;  nor  how,  if  it 
did  differ,  we  should  be  able  to  define  the 
difference,  his  personality  offering  itself  as  it 
does  under  a  strictly  human  guise  ;  nor  how 
any  such  difference  could  be  of  any  great 
moment  to  us.  We  are  saved  not  by  what 
Christ  is  in  the  recesses  of  his  own  nature,  but 
by  the  revelation  of  truth  he  makes  to  us 
under  physical  and  intellectual  facts  and  sym- 
bols familiar  to  us. 

We  are  all  the  sons  of  God,  children  of  his 
hand,  our  lives  are  a  mystery  to  us.  We  are 
certainly  in  no  condition  to  define  our  own 
physical  dependence  on  God  and  the  physical 
dependence  of  Christ,  our  own  structure  and  his 
structure,  and  point  out  the  differences  between 
them.  We  have  put  upon  ourselves  a  problem 
too  hard  for  us,  and  one  which  God  has  not 
put  upon  us.     Moreover,  we  are  losing  sight 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.      165 

of  the  truthfulness  and  directness  of  God's 
methods.  He  does  not  deal  in  illusions.  He 
does  not  offer  us  riddles  and  oracles  which 
must  first  be  untangled  within  themselves  and 
afterward  made  serviceable.  The  physical 
facts  of  the  world  are  his  eternal  speech,  and 
full  of  his  veracity.  To  make  them  other 
than  they  seem  to  be,  to  look  upon  them  as 
disguises  and  then  to  strive  to  strip  off  the 
mask,  is  at  once  a  disregard  of  the  integrity  of 
the  world,  and  a  greatly  exaggerated  estimate 
of  our  own  penetrative  and  explanatory  powers. 
We  cannot  thus  make  God's  messaee  to  our 
minds  and  hearts  a  sober,  coherent  and  in- 
structive one.  We  are  constantly  diverting 
our  attention  from  the  thinof  siornified  to  some- 
thing  in  the  manner  of  the  delivery.  It  would 
seem  as  if  all  must  admit  that  this  question  of 
the  Divinity  of  Christ  is  to  one  side  of  the 
direct  force  of  his  words,  and  turns  on  a  special 
rendering  of  special  terms.  We  do  not  let  the 
words  lie  in  the  very  stream  of  the  thought, 
but  strive  to  make  them  separate  sources  of 
revelation. 

When  one  like  Christ  stands  before  us  in 
the  flesh,  goes  in  and  out  among  us,  talks  with 
us,  we   are   wise    in    accepting   the   sensuous 


i66  Evolution  and  Religion. 

character  of  the  facts  for  what  they  seem  to 
be,  and  in  directing  our  attention  in  the  chan- 
nel of  his  thoughts,  of  his  instruction.  If  we 
do  not,  we  are  at  once  in  dreamland.  We 
may  regard  him  as  a  mere  "docetism"  ;  or  as 
an  embodiment  of  a  divine  being ;  or  as  some 
intermediate  form  of  mystery.  In  any  case, 
we  are  off  the  basis  of  verifiable  facts,  and  be- 
yond the  region  of  inculcation.  We  are  like 
the  people  of  Lycaonia,  who,  in  the  presence 
of  Paul  and  Barnabas,  said :  The  gods  are 
come  down  to  us  in  the  likeness  of  men. 
They  first  worshipped  them  and  then  stoned 
them.  The  facts  before  us  do  not  respond 
with  any  decision  to  the  theory  we  have  put 
upon  them,  hence  that  theory  shifts  itself  end- 
lessly, is  incapable  of  correction,  and  becomes 
more  and  more  unfruitful.  We  can  turn  the 
doctrine  of  trans-substantiation  into  many 
forms,  face  with  it  for  a  thousand  years  the 
facts  before  us,  and  get  nothing  out  of  it 
which  might  not  be  much  better  gotten  by  a 
purely  spiritual  rendering  of  the  sacrament. 

If  Christ  is  to  offer  himself  to  us  with  divine 
elements  these  must  be  found  where,  in  the 
first  instance,  we  failed  sufficiently  to  find 
them — In  his  words.     We  may  bewilder  our- 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.      167 

selves  as  much  as  we  please  about  the  make- 
up of  his  personality,  about  the  exact  character 
of  its  constituents  and  its  genetic  source,  we 
still  have  no  experience  on  these  subjects. 
The  more  intelligent  we  become,  the  more 
perplexing  and  uninstructive  is  the  assertion 
that  Christ,  as  we  know  him,  is  the  Second 
Person  in  the  Trinity.  Our  conception  of 
Deity  refuses  more  and  more  to  take  on  such 
limitations.  Christ  is  the  most  to  us  when  he 
is  a  way  into  the  truth,  and  by  the  truth  into 
life.  As  an  open  door  he  floods  the  world 
with  lio-ht. 

Does  it  follow  from  this  that  the  doctrine 
of  the  Divinity  of  Christ  has  played  no  profit- 
able part  in  the  evolution  of  faith  ?  Not  in 
the  least.  We  make  stepping  stones  of  our 
dead  selves.  What  we  fail  to  find  adequately 
at  one  point,  we  are  led  to  search  for  at  an- 
other. Each  lesser  finding  leads  to  the  larger. 
Our  religious  conceptions  become  too  compre- 
hensive for  any  of  the  expressions  we  put  upon 
them.  All  our  experiences  are  symbols  which 
imply  a  great  deal  and  actually  contain  very 
little.  They  must  all  yield,  like  the  glittering 
bubble,  to  the  warm  expansive  breath  that  is 
in  them  ;  and  when  they  cease  to  yield  they 


1 68  Evolution  and  Relieion. 


i!5 


will  soon  burst.  There  must  be  a  constant 
shifting  of  symbols,  because  all  of  them  are 
not  equally  adequate  and  none  of  them  wholly 
adequate.  The  defects  of  each  symbol  be- 
come obvious  and  painful  to  us  as  our  minds 
expand.  We  search  for  some  fresh  sugges- 
tion. It  is  of  the  nature  of  clouds,  that  float 
in  the  heavens  and  make  their  spaces  real  to 
us,  to  come  and  go  and  glide  into  each  other 
in  many  ways.  They  are  the  parable  of  the 
spiritual  terms  of  our  being.  These,  too,  must 
submit  themselves  to  every  change  of  temper- 
ature, every  wind  of  thought.  The  fetich,  the 
idol,  the  temple,  the  picture,  the  doctrine  have 
all  had  symbolic  force,  have  all  been  terms  in 
development,  and  all  exhaust  their  power. 
They  are  pernicious  only  when  they  refuse  to 
give  way.  When  men  were  laboring  at  the 
doctrine  of  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy 
Ghost,  they  were  at  work  under  the  law  of 
their  religious  life  ;  they  were  struggling  with 
the  overwhelming  sense  of  mystery.  When 
they  cast  aside  these  symbols  and  take  in  their 
place  something  less  definite,  they  are  equally 
under  this  law.  The  spiritual  imagination 
weaves  together  our  sensuous  and  super-sen- 
suous life,  and  it  does  its  work  well  when   it 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.      169 

never  leaves  our  spiritual  heavens  vacant, — 
unless  it  be  for  a  brief  period  in  which  the 
light  and  heat  sweep  away  every  image  as 
an  obstruction — and  never  for  long  occupies 
them  with  one  set  of  symbols.  We  may  climb 
up  to  God  by  virtue  of  priest,  bishop,  arch- 
bishop, pope.  Having  reached  him,  these 
intermediates  utterly  sink  away. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Divinity  of  Christ  and 
of  the  Trinity  have  stood  for  the  hold  of  men 
on  the  highest  mystery.  They  have  subserved 
a  weighty  symbolic  purpose.  Their  very  in- 
comprehensibility has  kept  them  fluent  and 
serviceable.  They  have  marked  an  inevitable 
and  instructive  transition  in  thought.  These 
doctrines  are  much  to  be  preferred  to  real,  to 
blank,  agnosticism.  We  say  real,  blank  agnos- 
ticism, for  it  is  almost  impossible  to  keep 
agnosticism  blank  for  any  considerable  period 
of  time.  It  soon  gathers  its  own  meaning, 
takes  on  its  own  expression  of  the  "  unknown,'* 
and  a  mystery  of  ultimate  being  is  put  back  of 
its  words.  Its  disciples,  like  Spencer  and  Har- 
rison, fall  by  the  ears  as  to  the  nature  of  this 
spirit  that  begins  to  stir  in  the  darkness  beyond. 
The  believing  mind  feels,  in  the  very  boldness 
of  its  faith,  that  it  is  dealing  with  the  undefin- 


I70  Evolution  and  Religion. 

able,  and  that  Its  safety  lies  in  that  fact.  "  The 
assertion  that  Christ  can  not  be  very  God  of 
very  God,  in  a  sense  infinitely  beyond  what 
may  be  truthfully  said  of  all  other  human 
beings.  Is  sheer  intellectual  presumption.  Is 
Indeed  dogmatism  of  the  worst  kind."*  The 
mind  of  the  writer  thus  relieved  Itself  of  the 
necessity  of  definition,  because  the  negation 
was  so  undefinable  and  impossible. 

One  of  the  great  reasons  why  this  super-sen- 
suous and  unverlfiable  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
has  had  such  a  hold  on  the  minds  of  men  Is 
that  it  remains  the  best  symbol  of  mystery, 
most  fully  floods  the  spirit  with  the  sense  of 
mystery  without  altogether  sweeping  It  from 
its  footing.  From  time  to  time  men  put  upon 
it  some  new  terms  of  intelligibility,  restore  its 
symbolical  power  by  associating  the  persons  of 
the  Trinity  with  some  triple  relation  in  the  world 
about  us — as  the  substantial  phase,  the  personal 
phase,  the  truth  phase  of  being.  The  very 
best  and  the  very  purest  minds,  men  like 
Pascal,  have  had  their  thoughts  deepened  and 
their  spiritual  experiences  enlarged  by  dogmas 
of  this  order.  They  have  been  vital  whether 
we  find  them  so  or  not. 

*  The  Christ  of  To-day.     p.  114. 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.      17^ 

The  objections  to  these  symbols  are  the 
objections  to  all  symbols,  the  limitations,  the 
embarrassments,  they  ultimately  put  upon  the 
thoughts,  the  certainty  with  which  they  come 
to  be  reearded  as  exact  and  final  statements  of 
truth.  From  the  moment  they  become  fixed, 
they  become  oppressive.  The  incongruities 
they  involve  rise  more  and  more  to  the  surface. 
The  mind  is  as  active  in  casting  them  off  as  it 
was  in  constructincr  them.  Our  formulae  no 
longer  reflect,  like  quiet  waters,  the  deep 
heavens  that  stretch  over  them.  We  fall  into 
a  weary  and  restless  state,  and  need  again  the 
refreshment  of  an  active  spiritual  imagination. 

If  these  doctrines  are  repeatedly  softened,  or 
ultimately  displaced,  by  a  deeper  sense  of  the 
exclusively  spiritual  force  of  things,  the .  move- 
ment lies  wholly  in  the  line  of  evolution.  We 
learn  to  abide  with  God  in  his  own  changeable, 
daily  revelation.  We  turn  the  world,  by  vir- 
tue of  the  life  of  the  spirit,  into  thoughts, 
experiences,  feelings,  at  one  with  the  highest 
purposes  of  being.  We  need  no  remote  specu- 
lation, no  deep-sea  dredging,  for  obscure  non- 
descript forms.  We  are  fully  immersed  in  the 
lessons  of  life,  which  at  once  lie  near  us  and 
stretch  infinitely  beyond  us.     The  unchange- 


1/2  Evolution  and  Religion. 

able  term  in  this  discipline  is  that  it  brings  us 
nearer  and  nearer  to  God  as  pure  Spirit.  God 
is  a  spirit,  and  must  be  worshipped  in  spirit 
and  in  truth.  We  steadily  shake  off  sensuous 
terms, — the  sandals  on  our  feet — and  leave  the 
too  familiar  symbol  behind  us  that  God  may 
draw  near  to  us  and  we  to  him,  not  in  one 
way,  but  in  all  ways.  Christ  told  his  disciples. 
It  is  expedient  for  you  that  I  go  away,  for  if 
I  go  not  away,  the  Comforter  will  not  come 
unto  you.  The  sensible  presence  must  give 
way  to  the  super-sensible,  the  more  universal, 
presence,  and  thus  the  life  of  the  disciple  be 
more  perfectly  wrapped  in  the  life  of  God. 
The  spirit  can  neither  pause  nor  turn  back- 
ward in  its  search  for  the  invisible ;  it  has 
simply  to  learn  to  abide  in  it  and  with  it  as  its 
own  proper  life.  We  are  not  to  be  subjected 
to  any  one  presentation,  any  one  method  of 
thinking.  If  we  are,  it  at  length  becomes 
barren  to  us.  The  spiritual  world  must  lie 
near  to  us  and  far  off,  as  the  atmosphere  to 
the  bird,  open  in  all  ways  of  flight  and  in  all 
directions. 

This  raises  the  question,  can  the  mind  ac- 
cept growth  as  an  ultimate  result  ?  Can  it  be 
found  forever  in  new  ways  opposing  the  spirit 


Spiritual  Phases  of  Evolution.      i  n 

to  the  letter,  the  large  and  impalpable  to  the 
narrow  and  palpable  ?  Can  it  forever  be  break- 
ing away  from  itself  and  yet  thereby  restoring 
itself  more  perfectly  to  itself  ?  The  secret  of 
evolution  is  here.  Each  single  step  we  take, 
we  understand  and  magnify.  Yet  the  steps 
beyond  seem  hazardous  and  fanciful.  Virtue 
behind  us  reflects  the  light  with  unfailing  brill- 
iancy ;  virtue  before  us  has  not  yet  fully  caught 
the  light.  It  is  because  a  vision  of  this  high 
order  comes  and  goes  in  the  mind  and  can 
never  be  lost  that  the  doctrine  of  spiritual 
life,  spiritual  evolution,  becomes  at  once  ideal 
and  actual ;  something  that  we  can  no  more 
escape  than  we  can  attain.  We  always  lie 
under  the  creative  hand  at  the  centre  of  crea- 
tive forces. 


PART   IV. 

EVOLUTION    IN    THE    PROOF    IT    OFFERS    TO 
SPIRITUAL    BELIEFS. 


175 


No!  love  which,  on  earth,  amid  all  the  shows  of  it, 
Has  ever  been  seen  the  sole  god  of  life  in  it. 
The  love,  ever  growing  there,  spite  of  the  strife  in  it, 
Shall  arise,  made  perfect,  from  death's  repose  of  it  ! 
And  I  shall  behold  Thee,  face  to  face, 

0  God,  and  in  Thy  light  retrace 

How  in  all  I  loved  here,  still  wast  Thou  ! 
Whom  pressing  to,  then,  as  I  fain  would  now, 

1  shall  find  as  able  to  satiate 

The  love.  Thy  gift,  as  my  spirit's  wonder 

Thou  art  able  to  quicken  and  sublimate, 

With  this  sky  of  Thine,  that  I  now  walk  under, 

And  glory  in  Thee  for,  as  I  gaze 

Thus,  thus  !     Oh,  let  men  keep  their  ways 

Of  seeking  Thee  in  a  narrow  shrine — 

Be  this  my  way  !     And  this  IS  mine  ! 

Christmas-eve. 
Robert  Browning. 


177 


PART    IV. 

EVOLUTION    IN    THE    PROOF    IT    OFFERS    TO 
SPIRITUAL    BELIEFS. 

WE  have  now  reached  that  which  Is 
most  interesting  in  the  doctrine  of 
evolution,  the  confirmation  it  brings 
to  our  spiritual  convictions.  What  evidence 
have  we  of  the  validity  of  our  higher  concept- 
ions, their  hold  upon  reality?  Incomparably 
more  than  when  they  are  left  to  rest,  in  a  de- 
tached way,  on  certain  supernatural  phenom- 
ena, and  are  regarded  as  in  a  more  or  less 
violent  manner  in  contention  with  the  facts  of 
the  world.  This  conception  strains  faith  to 
the  utmost.  If  the  world  and  the  flesh  and 
the  devil  are  at  war  with  righteousness,  once 
for  all,  then,  we  must  look  to  convulsive  over- 
throw for  its  establishment — to  some  millen- 
nial transition,  waited  for  so  long  in  vain,  still 
hidden  so  thoroughly  out  of  sight  in  the  events 
about  us.      This  puts  the  mind,  enveloped  in 

179 


i8o  Evolution  and  Religion. 

the  present  darkness, — a  darkness  it  exagger- 
ates by  coming  out  of  the  glare  of  revelation, 
— to  the  utmost  stretch  of  belief,  a  belief  that 
must  lift  it  quite  away  from  the  forces  every- 
where pressing  in  upon  it,  rather  than  leave  it 
in  hopeful  contact  and  concurrence  with  them. 
Evolution,  as  a  recent  product  of  inquiry, 
easily  takes  on  a  bewildering  glamour  and  is 
readily  applied  in  a  superficial  and  irritating 
way  to  earlier  beliefs.  Yet  all  knowledge  from 
the  beginning  has  prepared  the  way  for  it. 
All  knowledsfe  brings  it  immediate  or  remote 
confirmation.  Evolution  stands  for  the  uni- 
versality and  continuity  of  intelligible  relations, 
of  creative  processes.  It  takes  its  position  as 
an  assured  theory,  when  the  coherence  of 
events  has  been  established  at  a  sufficient 
number  of  points  to  cover  the  general  field  of 
inquiry.  The  doctrine  is  closely  associated 
with  Darwin,  because  his  researches  In  Biology 
removed  the  most  familiar,  and  the  most  for- 
midable, obstacle  to  Its  acceptance.  We  now 
claim,  with  a  rush  of  thought  the  coherent, 
genetic  force  of  events  which  so  many  things 
had  suggested,  but  not  established.  Our  pres- 
ent labor  lies  in  that  soberness  of  application 
which  makes  of  evolution  a  key  of  knowledge. 


Evolution  and  Spiritual  Beliefs.      i8i 

This  idea — which  to  the  theist  is  nothing 
more  than  a  sense  of  the  thoroughness  of 
God's  thought — received  into  the  spiritual 
world,  makes  it  the  final  product,  the  adequate 
completion  of  the  inorganic  and  the  organic 
worlds.  As  the  inorganic  world  has,  in  its 
unfolding,  prepared  the  way  for  the  organic 
world,  so  the  two,  in  turn,  lead  up  to  and  into 
the  spiritual  world.  Man,  on  the  physical  side, 
the  highest  product  of  animal  life,  becomes 
also  the  first  term  in  spiritual  life,  and,  through 
the  medium  of  society,  grows  into  thoughts 
and  feelings  and  activities  that  widen  out  into 
a  Kincrdom  of  Heaven.  The  sensuous  takes 
on  a  super-sensuous  force,  and  the  super-sen- 
suous, as  in  all  fine  art,  gains  an  adequate 
sensuous  rendering.  Man  comes  increasingly 
under  a  law  of  beauty,  a  law  of  truth,  a  law  of 
righteousness,  and,  with  fitting  and  thoroughly 
sustaining  impulses,  builds  up  in  purified  soci- 
ety a  spiritual  product  which  we  have  long 
dreamed  of  as  the  Kinedom  of  Heaven. 
Under  this  conception  strife  passes  by,  all 
things  become  one  and  work  with  each  other 
for  their  common  fruition.  The  glory  of  this 
consummation  has  been  with  us  as  a  faint 
morning   twilight    from   the   very   beginning. 


i82  Evolution  and  Religion. 

The  earliest  events,  and  subsequent  ones  in- 
creasingly, show  a  movement  onward  which  is 
a  revelation  of  order — the  disclosure  of  a  tran- 
quil and  brooding  purpose.  The  universe  is 
knit  together  by  an  eternal  and  under-girding 
thought.  This  conception  is  the  most  ade- 
quate and  sublime  possible,  begins  at  once  to 
get  to  itself  the  force  of  truth  by  its  combining 
power,  and  lifts  the  mind  to  the  point  of  ut- 
most vision. 

It  alters  our  conception  of  the  nature  of 
truth.  We  are  constantly  speaking  of  the 
eternal  and  immutable  character  of  truth.  We 
do  it  in  exaltation  of  the  notion  of  truth. 
These  adjectives  are  hardly  applicable  in  the 
customary  and  narrow  range  of  our  knowledge. 
While  truth  stands  prnnarily  for  physical  facts, 
and  the  forces  which  are  conceived  as  lying 
back  of  them, — the  ever-flowing  phenomena 
with  which  we  are  familiar — this  affirmation 
of  the  eternity  of  truth  is  a  figurative,  rather 
than  a  literal,  expression  ;  stands  for  our  con- 
fidence that  we  are  in  a  world  of  significant, 
not  meaningless,  changes.  The  eternity  of 
truth,  however.  Is  an  affirmation  too  broad  for 
these  facts.  The  universe  on  Its  physical  side, 
is  a  mobile  product.     It  is  continually  passing 


Evolution  and  Spiritual  Beliefs.     183 

away  as  well  as  continually  becoming.  The 
facts  of  to-day  are  not  those  of  yesterday ; 
much  less  is  the  knowledge  of  the  present  that 
of  the  past.  The  universe  does  not  tarry  In 
its  nest.  It  Is  ever  becoming  another  and  su- 
perior product.  Its  laws,  so  called,  take  on  new 
applications,  assume  new  breadth.  They  multi- 
ply from  below  upward,  as  the  range  of  vital.  In- 
tellectual, and  spiritual  phenomena  Is  Increased. 
The  universe  does  not  submit  itself  to  the 
statical  Idea  which  clings  to  the  words  eternal 
and  eternal  truth.  God  Is  known  to  us  rather 
as  a  erowlne  revelation  than  as  a  fixed  formula 
or  a  perfected  presence.  We  are  compelled 
to  conceive  of  facts  as  being  con^stantly  taken 
up  into  higher  and  more  comprehensive  ones  ; 
truth  as  leading  to  wider  and  more  ruling 
ideas,  and  all  thinors  as  returnlnor  Into  them- 
selves  by  an  upward  movement  before  the 
notion  of  eternal  truth  gets  for  us  the  con- 
tinuity and  inexhaustible  character  of  an  intel- 
lectual product. 

This  fluent  nature  of  truth  is  yet  more 
apparent  when  we  turn  to  its  more  appropriate 
meaning,  the  correspondence  of  the  mind's  con- 
ceptions with  the  underlying  conceptions  which 
bind  the  facts  together.     We  then  add  more 


184  Evolution  and  Reli^fion. 


fe- 


distinctly  to  the  changeability  of  the  facts  the 
changeability  of  our  thoughts  concerning  them. 
Truth  becomes  the  super-sensuous  term  which 
lies  between  us  and  the  universe  about  us, 
between  us  and  the  Divine  Mind.  It  is  the 
intellectual  impression  which  that  universe  is 
fitted  to  make  upon  us,  it  is  our  rendering  of 
it  into  thoughts,  our  approach  to  the  Ruling 
Idea.  Under  this  conception  of  truth,  abso- 
luteness and  eternity  are  quite  foreign  to  it. 
Truth,  our  truth, — and  we  know  no  other — is 
never  complete,  never  absolute.  It  is  always 
transitional,  always  pushing  by  growth  into  a 
more  adequate  expression.  The  mind  moves 
in  the  rear  of  facts.  Its  activities  lie  in  the 
direction  of  more  ample  knowledge,  more  per- 
fect statement.  The  only  thing  in  any  way 
absolute  is  that  we  follow  on  to  know  the 
Lord. 

It  has  been,  especially  in  connection  with  re- 
ligious inquiry,  a  very  misleading  conception, 
this  absoluteness  and  eternity  of  truth.  To 
affirm  the  eternity  of  the  truth  in  the  only 
form  in  which  we  have  to  do  with  it,  to  wit, 
our  conceptions  of  things  transcendental  and 
moving  forward  in  a  transcendental  way,  is  to 
destroy  the  truth  as  a  vital  power,  is  to  bury 


Evolution  and  Spiritual  Beliefs.      185 

beyond    resurrection    the    intellectual    germs 
planted  in  the  mind. 

We  must,  then,  to  begin  with,  under  this  no- 
tion of  evolution,  accept  the  truth  as  giving  us 
directions  of  thought,  axes  of  growth  and  no 
final  product  whatever.  It  is  only  the  most 
abstract  and  formal  statements,  like  those  of 
mathematics,  which  are  adequate  and  ultimate. 
The  kernel  of  knowledge  which  we  enclose  in 
them  has  very  little  of  this  absolute  character. 
There  is  relative  firmness  in  physical  elements, 
but  when  we  come  to  study  the  forms  they  are 
taking  on,  the  purposes  they  subserve,  and  the 
uses  to  which  they  can  be  put, — which  alone 
define  them — our  exact  statements  are  lost  to 
us. 

When  we  reach  up  to  spiritual  facts,  we  are 
dealing  with  truths  as  volatile  as  the  germina- 
ting forces  awakened  in  livino-  cells.  We  can 
no  more  define,  once  for  all,  the  paths  we  pur- 
sue, than  birds  can  map  out  their  lines  of  flight 
in  the  air.  This  is  not  feebleness  in  our  lives, 
it  is  fulness ;  it  is  not  the  narrowness  but  the 
largeness  of  our  powers.  It  is  not  the  incom- 
prehensibility of  the  things  with  which  we  are 
dealing,  but  their  over-comprehensibility.  We 
cannot,  and  we  must  not,  in  dealing  with  the 


1 86  Evolution  and  Relieion. 


t> 


validity  of  our  spiritual  conceptions  under  this 
notion  of  evolution,  weigh  them  as  final  and 
sufficient  formulae  of  truth,  but  as  suggestions 
of  that  which  lies  beyond,  as  transitional  terms 
in  spiritual  growth. 

The  very  magnitude  of  the  conceptions  with 
which  we  are  dealing  greatly  reduces  the  dan- 
ger of  essential  error.  All  our  knowledge  is 
gathered  up  by  them,  put  on  terms  of  depend- 
ence and  made  to  partake  in  one  common 
movement.  If  we  study  biological  develop- 
ment at  a  single  point,  we  may  easily  be  con- 
fused. The  wider  the  field  the  more  certain 
the  results.  The  unity  and  unfolding  force  of 
the  divine  thought  secure,  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  a  visible  and  undeniable  expression.  Its 
constituents,  its  cardinal  events,  the  sweep  of 
the  movement,  are  all  before  us.  The  inter- 
spaces of  confusion  and  disorder  sink  out  of 
sight,  are  but  the  incidents  of  the  pervading 
purpose.  This  conception  of  evolution  is  of 
the  most  comprehensive  order.  It  embraces 
the  physical  world,  the  intellectual  relations 
which  these  sensuous  terms  set  in  order,  and 
the  entire  spiritual  life  interwoven  with  them 
and  resting  back  upon  them.  Nor  do  we  lose 
the   sense   of    infinity  which  presses  so   close 


Evolution  and  Spiritual  Beliefs.      187 

upon  all  our  thinking.  Though  the  upheavals 
of  the  divine  thought  nearest  us,  gaining  form 
and  light  before  us,  fill  and  exhaust  our  vision, 
we  are  still  left  with  our  horizon — a  circle  of 
stellar  worlds  whose  history  lies  far  beyond  us. 
Though  the  mountains  on  which  we  stand  are 
of  such  magnitude,  they  have  their  setting  in 
a  universe  commensurate  with  them.  We  are 
left,  as  it  were,  to  one  reverberatine  voice  of 
truth  that  dies  out  in  the  remote  distance  and 
suffers  no  contradiction. 

As  this  idea  of  evolution  runs  entirely 
through  the  world,  its  general  anticipations 
and  conclusions  gain  a  correspondingly  certain 
character.  We  cannot  well  be  mistaken  in 
them.  There  may  be  error  at  this  point,  or  at 
that,  but  all  things  confirm  the  general  result. 
Afloat  on  a  river  that  feels  in  its  tortuous  wind- 
ings each  local  cause,  we  may  readily  be  con- 
fused as  to  its  immediate  bearings,  but  as  to  its 
general  direction  there  can  be  no  mistake. 
Forces  of  the  most  far-reaching  and  imperious 
order  carry  it  forward.  With  the  same  clear- 
ness with  which  we  see  that  physical  life  is 
ripening  into  intellectual  life  and  intellectual 
life  into  social  and  spiritual  life,  that  all  things 
press  upward  into  a  purer,  more  divine  pres- 


1 88  Evolution  and  Religion. 

ence,  that  there  is  and  there  can  be  no  other 
trend  in  this  comprehensive  movement,  that 
all  conflicting  tendencies  are  partial  and  tempo- 
rary, mere  eddies  in  the  stream,  a  retreat  sim- 
ply to  gain  fresh  vantage  for  progress,  do  we 
see  that  the  one  masterful  current  is  cumulat- 
ive, irresistible,  and  that  we  can  trust  ourselves 
to  it  with  a  certainty  that  knows  no  doubt. 

Our  theistic  faith  becomes  comprehensive 
and  sure  ;  the  most  comprehensive,  and  so  the 
most  sure,  of  all  the  things  the  mind  accepts. 
The  character  of  God  as  it  is  revealed  to  us 
from  within  and  from  without.  In  the  evolution 
of  truth  and  in  the  evolution  of  its  physical 
counterparts,  is  transformed  Into  the  most  preg- 
nant and  prophetic  term  of  the  world.  Pre- 
diction, hope,  life,  flow  inevitably  and  freely 
out  of  It.  We  need  no  other  assurance.  The 
deeper  we  penetrate  into  the  spirit  of  the 
world  the  more  completely  are  we  enveloped 
by  It.  This  ruling  Idea,  the  character  of  God, 
Is  forever  gaining  disclosure  In  the  universal 
movement.  Scattered  events,  here  and  there, 
the  mishaps  which  lie  nearest  to  us,  are  capa- 
ble of  easy  misapprehension,  are  already  mis- 
apprehended by  the  hold  they  have  on  our 
feelings ;  but  when  we  fall   back  on  the  ever- 


Evolution  and  Spiritual  Beliefs.      189 

growing  conception  of  God,  and  reason  from  it, 
light  breaks  in,  not  as  from  a  lamp  in  one's 
hand,  but  as  a  diffused  and  increasing  presence 
in  the  upper  air,  as  lines  of  radiation  from  a 
centre  not  yet  fully  disclosed  which  lie  quite 
athwart  the  clouds. 

Take  such  a  doctrine  as  that  of  everlastinor 
punishment,  the  penalty  of  sin.  It  remains 
with  men  so  long  as  they  have  not  the  ideas  of 
justice,  patience,  renovation,  grace  which  in- 
evitably exclude  it.  As  these  ideas  gain  ground, 
this  conception  gives  way.  It  ceases  to  have 
interpreting  power.  It  becomes  a  perversion 
of  the  moral  order,  creative  purpose  and  grow- 
ing beauty  of  the  world.  It  perishes  from 
men's  minds  because  the  ideas  which  have 
nourished  it  are  takine  on  hiorher  forms.  The 
irresistibleness  of  such  a  movement  shows  its 
divine  authority,  shows  how  deeply  it  is  con- 
tained in  the  spiritual  unfolding  of  our  lives. 
A  growing  conception  of  the  character  of  God 
is  the  fruition  of  all  knowledge,  and  our  new 
impulses  under  it  have  the  force  of  a  higher 
phase  of  life,  the  latest  creative  work  of  God. 
We  can  no  more  doubt  this  erowinor  revelation 
of  the  world  than  we  can  distrust  the  dawn  of 
day  because  many  things  still  He  in   shadow. 


iQo  Evolution  and  Reliction 


fe 


Our  earlier  Impressions  are  rapidly  giving  way 
to  clearer  and  more  extended  ones.  The  ex- 
ternal support  we  can  bring  to  any  single  dogma 
to  which  we  may  hang  our  faith,  like  the  In- 
spiration of  Scripture,  Is  slight  Indeed  com- 
pared with  this  direct  resting  back  on  God  In 
the  entire  creative  process,  In  an  evolution  we 
are  dally  sharing.  From  this  ruling  conception 
all  light  flows,  and  the  moment  any  belief  be- 
gins to  cast  a  baneful  shadow  nothing  hinders 
our  setting  It  aside.  We  are  working  with 
light  and  that  only.  This  Is  the  logic  of  our 
spiritual  life,  the  coherence  of  the  spiritual 
world  on  which  we  are  enterlne.  We  fear 
nothing  because  the  shadows  are  fleeing  away. 
We  share  with  the  Samaritans  a  new  sense  of 
truth.  Now  we  believe  not  because  of  thy 
saying,  for  we  have  heard  him  ourselves  and 
know  that  this  Is  Indeed  the  Christ,  the  Savior 
of  the  world. 

It  Is  by  virtue  of  this  relatively  independent 
and  growing  hold  of  each  mind  on  the  truth 
that  we  reconcile  Instruction  and  Insight,  sub- 
mission and  mastery.  We  can  be  led  by 
Christ  into  the  truth,  but  being  there  we  are 
no  longer  led.  Many  may  help  us  In  forming 
our  conceptions  of  God,  but  that  conception, 


Evolution  and  Spiritual  Beliefs.      191 

being  formed,  rules  the  mind  by  its  own  power. 
The  doctrine  of  evolution  discloses  to  us  the 
divine  mind  with  the  largest  possible  accumu- 
lation of  details  and  with  the  most  overwhelm- 
ing force.  Hence  prophetic  vision,  faith,  the 
light  that  lies  athwart  the  future  gathers  at  once 
assurance.  We  have  found  God  and  are  at  rest. 
We  urge  this  growth  of  belief  in  one  more 
direction.  We  have  framed  an  induction  un- 
der the  doctrine  of  evolution  of  the  most  com- 
prehensive character,  and  so  we  are  entitled  to 
its  conclusions  and  its  consolations.  We  re- 
mind ourselves  again  of  what  we  have  to  show, 
of  what  is  involved  in  a  spiritual  evolution  of 
the  race.  Earlier  conceptions  are  not  to  be 
regarded  as  simply  misleading  illusions,  but  as 
germinating  ideas.  An  idol  is  a  primitive 
rendering  of  a  spiritual  presence.  It  is  service- 
able until  its  inadequacy  and  its  incompatible 
elements  come  to  be  felt.  Later  conceptions, 
as  that  of  God  immanent  in  the  world,  are 
the  product  of  the  same  tendency  under  grow- 
ing knowledge.  They  are  authoritlve  in  the 
measure  of  the  wider  survey  that  lies  back  of 
them.  The  nature  of  this  growth  in  the  con- 
ception of  God  may  be  hidden  from  us  by  the 
fact  that  it  is  less  and  less  capable  of  accepting  a 


192  Evolution  and  Religion. 

final  formula,  is  more  and  more  a  product  of 
the  spiritual  imagination.  The  corrective 
process  by  which  the  notion  of  the  Absolute 
gains  its  true  dimensions  is  one  by  which  we 
cast  aside  limitations  rather  than  set  them  up. 
We  are  not,  for  this  reason,  to  regard  it  as  a 
negative  result.  We  are  not  being  pushed 
farther  and  farther  into  the  unknown. 

In  philosophy  and  in  religion,  scepticism,  of 
a  negative  character,  has  always  proved  weak. 
Not  till  some  positive  enlargement  of  truth  has 
been  offered  do  inadequate  notions  begin  to 
give  way.  There  is  no  discipleship  of  nega- 
tions. The  chief  service  of  scepticism  is  to 
compel  a  reformation  of  ruling  ideas.  The 
corrected  conception  is  more  pervasive  and 
controlling  than  the  earlier  one.  Thus  the 
notion  of  a  Divine  Presence  becomes  a  su- 
preme factor  in  spiritual  life,  and  spiritual  life 
takes  to  itself  all  forms  of  life.  With  this  as- 
sertion before  us  of  an  ever-expanding  spirit- 
ual experience  In  the  race,  a  more  systematic, 
comprehensive,  and  general  grasp  of  the  truth, 
we  turn  to  the  Inductive  arorument. 

Our  Intellectual  experiences  Involve  three 
elements,  an  instinctive,  a  rational,  and  an 
ethical  one.     Each  of  these  implies  an  Increas- 


Evolution  and  Spiritual  Beliefs.      193 

ing  hold  of  our  spiritual  life  on  the  facts  which 
surround  it  and  nourish  it.  Instincts  stand  for 
the  unconscious  responses  of  animal  life  to  its 
circumstances.  They  are  very  general  and 
subtile  methods  of  adjustment,  which  prepare 
the  way  for  later  development.  Instincts,  as 
primary  adaptations,  may  be  outgrown  and 
may  give  place  to  higher  methods.  It  does 
not  belong  to  them,  however,  to  be  widely  or 
for  any  considerable  period,  out  of  relation  to 
the  physical  world.  The  animal  is  not  pos- 
sessed of  one  tendency  while  his  circumstances 
call  for  another.  Corrections  set  in  and  the 
instinct  regains  its  footing.  Any  other  result 
would  leave  the  world  and  the  life  it  nourishes 
out  of  harmony.  It  is  a  matter  of  surprise 
when  any  of  these  organic  tendencies  are,  even 
in  a  narrow  way,  unserviceable. 

A  belief  in  spiritual  beings  and  influences 
has  something  of  the  spontaneous  and  univer- 
sal force  of  an  instinct.  In  its  earlier  forms 
especially  it  is  inevitable,  blind,  controlling. 
We  are  bound  to  believe,  under  the  notion  of 
evolution,  that  this  irrepressible  and  widely  in- 
fluential recognition  of  super-sensuous  forces 
stands  for  a  correspondingly  weighty  fact ;  that 

it   indicates  a  new   adjustment,    in   its   earlier 
13 


194  Evolution  and  Relimon. 


<:5 


Stages,  of  seen  to  unseen  things,  and  may 
easily  be  a  first  term  in  an  entirely  fresh  form 
of  development.  We  are  certainly  not  at  lib- 
erty to  think  of  it  as  a  surreptitious  impulse, 
confusing  the  lines  of  progress.  The  cohe- 
rence and  universality  of  causes  do  not  ad- 
mit of  such  a  supposition.  The  moment  we 
discover  an  instinct  in  animal  life,  we  are  put 
on  an  inquiry  into  its  relations,  knowing  that 
these  will  be  valid  and  important.  The  in- 
stant we  recognize  the  universal  movement  of 
men  toward  a  spiritual,  as  opposed  to  a  sensu- 
ous world,  we  must  be  prepared  to  see  in  it  the 
introduction  to  a  new  and  higher  experience. 
If  we  do  not,  we  fall  off  from  the  doctrine  of 
evolution,  we  lose  the  clue  to  coming  events. 

So  far  as  our  spiritual  conceptions  are  ra- 
tional,— and  they  are  growingly  rational — this 
sense  of  adaptation  and  reliability  is  increased. 
None  of  us  is  so  far  prepared  to  invalidate 
reason  as  to  disparage  this  growth  of  the  more 
'  consistent,  out  of  the  less  consistent,  concep- 
tion. We  have  no  other  instrument  with  which 
to  weaken  its  force  than  reason  itself.  We 
are  disposed  rather  to  accept  the  more  blind, 
instinctive  belief  for  the  sake  of  the  more 
rational  one  to  which  it  eives  rise.     We  find  a 


Evolution  and  Spiritual  Beliefs.      195 

double  inductive  argument,  first  in  the  darker, 
second  in  the  clearer  relation,  both  lying  in  the 
line  of  evolution.  So  far  as  our  growing  spirit- 
ual conceptions  are  the  product  of  reason,  they 
must  be  increasingly  adjusted  to  the  world  in 
which  we  are,  and  to  our  own  inner  life  in  its 
mastery  of  it.  To  think  otherwise  is  to  dis- 
card reason,  break  down  the  processes  of 
thought,  and  fall  back  into  utter  confusion. 
We  cannot  sustain  reason  for  ends  of  unbelief 
without  also  fully  sustaining  it  for  the  ends  of 
belief.  It  is  involved  in  religion,  it  is  involved 
in  philosophy,  it  is  involved  in  science,  that 
the  processes  of  thought  are  essentially  sound ; 
most  pertinent  to  the  events  which  enclose 
us  ;  open  to  correction,  and  capable  of  correc- 
tion In  the  lines  of  movement  which  they  them- 
selves lay  down.  Any  diving  deeper  than  this 
brings  up  nothing  but  dirt.  There  Is  thus  an 
induction  as  nearly  universal  as  any  Induction 
can  be,  since  It  grows  out  of  our  entire  experi- 
ence and  gains  force  with  It,  that  our  rational 
processes  In  their  inherent  and  inevitable  ten- 
dencies, are  the  most  deep-seated  possible  ad- 
justments to  the  real  world  which  envelops  us. 
It  Is  simply  an  application  of  the  universal 
principle  that  every  effect  has  some  adequate 


19^  Evolution  and  Religion. 

cause,  that  the  world  visible  and  invisible,  is 
knit  together  In  perpetual  action  and  reaction. 
On  this  increasing  continuity  and  coherence  of 
reason,  rests  the  order  of  the  spiritual  world. 
It  stands  in  the  upper  realm  for  precisely  that 
which  causation  stands  for  In  the  lower  realm. 
So  far,  therefore,  as  a  rational  tendency  gains 
footing  in  an  instinctive  one,  and  leads  to  a 
spiritual  experience,  it  widens  the  world  in 
which  we  are,  and  lies  In  the  line  of  the  fullest 
expression  of  its  forces.  It  Is  at  one  with  the 
Integrity  of  the  entire  movement. 

The  ethical  element  raises  this  presumption 
of  validity  to  Its  highest  terms.  Ethical  ideas 
develop  in  connection  with  spiritual  ones.  In  a 
social  experience  Increasingly  permeated  by 
the  laws  of  conduct.  The  phenomena  and  the 
laws  suited  to  them  come  tos^ether.  As  in  the 
two  tables,  four  commands  turn  on  spiritual 
and  six  on  social  relations,  so  has  It  ever  been. 
A  better  conception  of  God  means  better 
morality,  and  better  morality  a  better  concep- 
tion of  God.  But  none  of  our  powers  lay  hold 
on  truth  with  more  conviction  and  authority 
than  do  our  moral  powers.  The  law  gains 
strength  as  it  gains  breadth  and  clearness.  It 
is  impossible  to  think  of  an  ethical  develop- 


Evolution  and  Spiritual  Beliefs.      197 

ment  along  a  line  of  increasing  unreality. 
Ethical  growth,  more  than  any  other,  means 
an  Insight  Into  facts,  and  an  Increasingly  ac- 
curate adjustment  to  them.  The  gain,  there- 
fore, of  "social  tissue"  In  ethical  rightfulness, 
which  has  accompanied  the  expansion  of  re- 
ligious conception, — such  as  Is  shown  In  the 
first  and  second  great  command — declares, 
with  an  Invincible  Inductive  force  the  Integrity, 
the  validity,  of  the  process  of  which  It  Is  a  part. 
Our  spiritual  life  cannot  have  grown  by  fasten- 
ing on  unreal  and  vanishing  Ideas.  It  stands, 
and  has  ever  stood,  for  our  closest  contact  with 
realities.  We  may  rest,  therefore,  assured 
with  that  assurance  which  Is  the  aggregate 
force  of  knowledcre,  that  the  general  move- 
ment  of  our  spiritual  life  Is  Into  the  light  and 
under  the  deepest  forces  which  touch  the 
world.  We  are  dealing  with  realities  which 
evade  us  only  because  they  are  so  subtile  and 
comprehensive.  We  cannot  grasp  the  air  with 
the  hand,  but  If  we  are  content  to  breathe  It 
it  carries  vitality  to  every  portion  of  the  body. 
The  noblest  and  the  best  of  men  have  thriven, 
and  pre-eminently  thriven,  by  means  of  spirit- 
ual conceptions  which  had  lost  for  them  their 
illusory  character. 


igS  Evolution  and  Religion. 

The  hold  which  the  mind  gains  on  the  world 
by  virtue  of  spiritual  conceptions  is  especially 
seen  in  the  prophetic  temper.  Forecast  is 
inseparable  from  knowledge.  We  no  sooner 
see  the  evolutionary  laws  of  the  world  than 
we  discover  whither  they  are  tending.  It  is 
inevitable  that  every  period,  deep  and  devout 
in  its  spiritual  life,  should  entertain  a  Mes- 
sianic conception  ;  should  feel  the  stir  in  the 
soil  of  faith's  germs  ;  should  anticipate  a  com- 
ing Spring  as  the  forces  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  disclose  themselves.  The  knowledge 
of  the  Lord  shall  cover  the  earth  as  the  waters 
cover  the  sea.  So  every  spirit  feels  in  whom 
the  revelation  of  divine  things  is  entering. 
The  assertion  only  expresses  its  astonished 
sense  of  the  latent  power  of  spiritual  truth. 

Though  our  hopes  about  this  or  that  event 
may  not  be  any  proof  that  the  thing  desired 
will  occur,  these  hopes,  when  they  stand  for 
the  inner  impulse  of  growth  present  in  the 
human  soul,  may  be  the  most  undeniable 
proof.  They  are,  then,  the  forerunners  of  a 
life  adequate  for  its  own  ends,  and  forcing  its 
way  upward.  From  this  point  of  view,  men 
have  not  attached  too  much  importance  to 
the  prophetic  temper.      They  have  erred  only 


Evolution  and  Spiritual  Beliefs.      199 

when  they  regarded  some  narrow  expression 
of  it  as  more  significant  than  the  underlying 
impulse.  None  of  us  can  anticipate  the  pre- 
cise events  of  the  opening  season  ;  we  can  all 
predict  the  many  and  wide  victories  of  awak- 
ened life.  Definiteness  of  Messianic  predic- 
tion is  a  groping  of  the  mind  in  darkness  ;  the 
prophecy  itself  is  the  soul's  certainty  of  spirit- 
ual things. 

No  doctrine  so  rests  on  this  prophetic  force 
of  the  spirit  as  that  of  immortality.  Neglect- 
ing a  few  exceptions  as  of  no  practical  moment, 
we  may  affirm  that  this  belief  has  appeared, 
and  is  sure  to  appear,  in  the  measure  in  which 
the  higher  ethical  life  is  present.  It  is  the 
inevitable  forecast  of  the  spirit  when  it  is  in 
any  good  measure  awakened  to  its  own  pow- 
ers. It  is  a  truth  that  can  hardly  be  told  to  a 
man, — if  thou  be  the  Christ,  tell  us  plainly — 
it  must  be  discovered  by  him,  be  found  within 
himself  as  the  inner  force  of  his  own  life.  My 
words  they  are  spirit  and  they  are  life.  It  is 
wholly  in  this  temper  that  Christ  involves  it 
in  the  facts  which  he  is  interpreting.  The 
water  that  I  shall  give  him  shall  be  in  him  a 
well  of  water,  springing  up  into  everlasting 
life.    Everlasting  life  is  not  so  much  something 


200  Evolution  and  Religion. 

to  be  given  as  something  already  given,  po- 
tential in  the  power  of  the  spirit.  Whosoever 
liveth  and  believeth  in  me  shall  never  die. 
The  mind  once  fully  possessed  of  a  sense  of 
its  own  divine  nature  cannot  doubt  that  all 
thinofs  will  submit  themselves  to  that  nature. 
That  events  should  make  way  before  the 
spirit  is  no  longer  a  marvel,  is  a  fact  of  the 
same  order  as  the  bursting  of  the  bud  and  the 
blossoming  of  the  flower,  the  hourly  miracle 
of  life.  Christ  finds  immortality  in  the  soul 
of  man,  in  its  hold  on  truth.  On  the  side  of 
God,  he  finds  it  in  the  scope  of  his  purposes. 
God  is  not  the  God  of  the  dead  but  of  the  liv- 
ing. He  robs  himself  of  his  own  work  if  he 
allows  Abraham,  Isaac,  Jacob,  to  sink  into  dust. 
There  cease  to  be  storehouses  of  divine  wis- 
dom. The  ephemeral  character  of  his  cre- 
ations would  mean  the  ephemeral  character 
of  his  own  life.  God  cannot  be  the  God  of 
the  dead.  Myriads  cannot  constitute  an  ani- 
mal kingdom,  much  less  a  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 
Immortality  lies  at  the  basis  of  the  greatness 
and  grandeur  of  the  spiritual  world.  We  first 
discover  this  world  and  then  its  implications. 
Ye  believe  In  God,  believe  also  in  me,  ex- 
presses the  Inner  coherence  of  spiritual  truth. 


Evolution  and  Spiritual  Beliefs.      2or 

Nothing  can  take  the  place  of  this  genetic 
force  of  ideas  ;  nothing  can  withstand  it.  Be- 
lief in  God  carries  all  things  with  it.  We  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being  in  him. 

We  often  speak  of  a  scientific  sense.  We 
frequently  observe  the  want  of  it  in  men  other- 
wise excellently  endowed.  It  lies  chiefly  in  a 
recognition  of  the  significancy  of  a  tendency 
inductively  established,  its  ruling  power  in  all 
directions.  As  the  merest  thread  of  nervous 
fibre  is  carefully  traced,  and  its  function  sought 
for,  so  every  indication  of  sequence  is  laid  hold 
of  by  the  scientific  mind  as  an  unmistakable 
clue  to  structure. 

These  is  also  a  spiritual  sense,  a  power  to 
feel  spiritual  connections  and  to  discover  their 
implications.  It  is  an  inductive  tendency 
exercised  in  a  hiorher  region.  It  has  the  con- 
structive  force  of  an  artistic  temper.  It  is  as 
real  as  the  most  real  thing,  and  as  subtile  as 
the  most  spiritual  thing.  It  is  in  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  that  these  lower  and  higher  im- 
pressions find  their  ultimate  harmony,  parts  of 
one  expanding,  intellectual  whole. 

It  is  this  sense  that  pronounces  on  immor- 
tality. It  is  this  sense,  that  once  accepting 
immortality,  gives  no  further  room  for  doubt. 


202  Evolution  and  Religion. 

The  idea  becomes  more  and  more  the  centre  of 
all  the  mind's  spiritual  constructions.      Without 
it  events  fall  back  into  chaos.      This  growth  of 
the  doctrine  by  internal  accretion  rather  than 
by  external  accumulation  is  wholly  rational,  and 
peculiarly  rational    in    connection  with  evolu- 
tion.     The  one  grand  movement  on  which  the 
mind  has  fastened  is  that  toward  spiritual  life. 
This  movement  cannot  be  stayed,  cannot  be 
restricted,  any  more  on  its  spiritual  than  on  its 
physical    side.     The    two    are   henceforth    in- 
separable.     But  spiritual    life    means  nothing 
more  than  the  increasing  force  which  the  mind 
itself  is  able  to  attach  to  super-sensuous  con- 
victions ;  as  the  scientific  temper  stands  for  its 
hold  on  physical  relations.      As  forecast  is  the 
power  to  apprehend  events  still  in  the  distance, 
so  spirituality  is  the  power  to  lay  hold  of  ethical 
convictions  and  affections  as  the  most  adequate 
and  effective  terms  in  life.      The  ethical  temper 
easily    reaches    the     super-sensuous    thought 
through  the  sensuous  form  ;  finds  back  of  the 
near  and  the  immediate   the    distant  and  the 
remote,  and  this  along  the  lines  of  evolution. 
God  is  a  being  to  be  thought  of  less  and  less 
sensuously,  to  be  rejoiced  in  more  and  more 
super-sensuously.      The   spiritual    government 


Evolution  and  Spiritual  Beliefs.      203 

of  the  world  and  its  highest  Incentives  are  first 
found  within  the  mind  Itself,  and  later  meet 
with  confirmation  beyond  It,  a  confirmation 
which  Is  the  replication  of  Its  own  Insight. 
Immortality  Is  not  to  be  proved  sensuously  ;  so 
proved  It  would  lack  Its  chief  significance.  It 
would  lie  In  direct  extension  of  physical  things. 
It  is  to  be  proved  super-sensuously,  as  the 
presence  and  power  of  those  truths  whose  fitting 
expression  It  Is.  It  must  grow  out  of,  and  it 
must  be  grafted  on,  its  own  form  of  life.  Im- 
mortality as  a  belief  must  be  an  achievement, 
the  thrust  of  the  mind  itself  towards  life,  if  it 
is  to  have  the  power  of  a  spiritual  belief.  It 
must  go  forth  from  the  soul's  own  experience, 
and  be  taken  hourly  back  into  that  experience. 
Otherwise  It  becomes  an  external  dogma  on 
which,  in  any  moment  of  darkness,  the  mind 
loses  hold.  It  will  have  the  force  of  a  lurid 
portent  or  the  peaceful  presence  of  a  guiding 
light  just  in  the  measure  In  which  the  life 
declares  it,  and  draws  near  to  it.  In  its  daily 
unfolding. 

We  reason  wisely  when  we  reason  from  that 
which  is  best  In  us.  The  best  is  best,  because 
of  Its  higher,  wider  adaptations.  The  better 
conception,  the  more  comprehensive,  harmoni- 


204  Evolution  and  Religion. 

ous  idea,  is  like  the  stronger  life,  it  is  the  thing 
that  is  to  survive.  The  conception  of  immor- 
tality justifies  itself  as  the  conception  which 
gives  new  power  to  spiritual  life.  It  carries  it 
to  a  higher  plane,  and  there  unfolds  it.  It 
marks  a  distinct  stage  in  evolution. 

The  facts  confirm  this  theoretical  estimate 
of  its  force.  The  doctrine  of  immortality,  as 
entertained  by  men,  has  ennobled  them  and 
given  them  greatly  increased  power.  It  has 
been  an  essential  incentive  in  widening  spirit- 
ual impulses  and  rendering  them  victorious. 
We  may  not,  therefore,  deny  it  a  place  in  that 
development  by  which  the  forces  of  a  spiritual 
world  are  brought  together.  Valid  as  an  ex- 
isting power,  it  is  valid  as  a  part  enclosed  in  a 
larger  whole. 

The  mind  does  wisely  when  it  follows  in  the 
rear  of  ruling  ideas.  Our  roads  are  well  laid 
out  when  they  accept  the  lead  of  the  brooks. 
They  thread  the  ravines  and  reach  the  fruitful 
plains  associated  all  the  way  with  the  quiet 
murmur,  bright  reflection,  and  unstaying  flow 
of  a  cosmic  force. 

It  is  certainly  in  keeping  with  the  spiritual 
evolution  which  we  are  affirming,  that  its  one 
essential  term,  immortality,  arises  in  the  mind 


Proof  it  offers  to  Spiritual  Beliefs.   205 

itself  as  one  of  the  earliest  products  of  its  new 
life.  This  is  what  spirituality  means,  the  power 
of  the  spirit  to  envelop  the  sensuous  world 
with  a  true  heavens,  the  two  in  living  interplay. 
This  is  that  stage  of  creation  with  which  we 
are  all  busy,  the  establishment  of  a  firmament — 
which  the  Scriptures  call  Heaven — dividing 
the  waters  which  are  under  it  from  the  waters 
which  are  above  it,  and  so  making  ready  for  a 
second  day  in  the  cosmic  movement.  The 
world  moves  ;  this  is  the  very  substance,  the 
underlying  condition,  of  knowledge.  But 
whither  does  it  so  certainly  and  obviously 
move  as  toward  a  spiritual  life  ever  renewed 
by  invisible  relations  with  God  and  with  man  ? 
Here  is  a  creation  that  compacts  the  world 
Into  one  purpose  and  discloses  the  povv^er  of  all 
that  has  been  done,  and  all  that  remains  to  be 
done — a  creation  which  Is  the  embodied  wis- 
dom and  love  of  God.  When  we  discover 
evolution  as  the  dynamic  force  of  truth,  the 
Spirit  of  Truth  begins  to  disclose  all  things  to 
us.  The  nidus  of  the  world,  physical  and 
spiritual,  lies  before  us. 

THE    END. 


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tion of  the  development  of  religious  thought  in  the  New  Testament, 
and  his  refined  and  forceful  style  render  this  one  of  the  foremost 
books  of  the  year  in  its  department. 

The  Bible  :  Its  Origin  and  Growth  and  its  Place  among 
the  Sacred  Books  of  the  World.  Together  with  a 
List  of  Books  for  Study  and  Reference.  With  Criti- 
cal Comments.  By  Jabez  Thomas  Sunderland, 
author  of  "What  is  the  Bible?"      T2mo,  $1.50. 

"To-day  thinking  people  on  every  side  are  asking,  and  with  an 
insistence  and  earnestness  wholly  unknown  in  the  past,  the  question : 
What  has  an  honest,  independent,  and  competent  biblical  scholar- 
ship— a  scholarship  that  investigates  and  speaks  in  the  interest,  not 
of  theological  dogmatism,  but  of  truth — to  tell  us  about  the  Bible, 
as  to  its  origin,  its  authorship,  its  real  character,  its  place  among  the 
great  sacred  books  of  the  world,  its  permanent  value  ?  " — Extract 
from  Preface. 


RECENT  THEOLOGICAL  WORKS 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire,  A.D.  64-170. 

— With  Chapters  of  Later  Christian  History  in  Asia 
Minor.     By  Prof.  W.  M.  Ramsay,  of  the  University 
of  Aberdeen,  author  of  "  The  Historical  Geography 
of  Asia  Minor."     8vo,  with  maps,  $3.00. 
"  It  is  a  book  of  very  exceptional  value.     Prof.   Ramsay  is  a  real 
scholar,  and  of  the  very  best  type  of  scholarship.     A  thoroughly  good 
book  ;  a  product  of  first-hand  and  accurate  scholarship  ;  in  the  high- 
est degree  suggestive  ;  and  not  only  valuable  in  its  results,  but  an 
admirable  exa.nple  of  the  true  method  of  research." — The  Church- 
man. 

St.  Paul  the  Traveller  and  the  Roman  Citizen. 

By  W.   M.    Ramsay.     With  maps.     One  vol.,   Svo, 

cloth,  $3.00. 
"  A  work  which  marks  an  important  step  in  advance  in  the  histori- 
cal interpretation  of  St.  Paul.  .  .  .  Professor  Ramsay  has  made 
a  solid  and  valuable  contribution  to  the  interpretation  of  the  Apostolic 
literature  and  of  the  Apostolic  age— a  contribution  distinguished  no 
less  by  ripe  scholarship,  independent  judgment,  keen  vision,  and  easy 
mastery  of  mate  ial,  than  by  freshness  of  thought,  boldness  of  c;  mbi- 
nation,  and  striking  originality  of  view."— T'/;^  (English)  Speaker. 

Christian  Theism:  Its  Claims  and  Sanctions.— 

By  D.  B.  PuRiNTON,  LL.D.,  President  of  Denison 

University.  Gilt  top,  Svo,  $1.75. 
"  President  Purinton's  work  on  '  Christian  Theism'  seems  to  me  a 
remarkably  good  book,  which  may  be  strongly  recommended  to 
thoughtful  readers,  and  is  partially  well  suited  to  be  a  text-book  for 
classes.  It  treats  of  various  sides  of  the  subject,  with  vigorous 
thought,  clear  arrangement,  and  in  a  style  that  is  at  once  terse  and 
lucid."— John  A.  Broadus,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  President  Southern 
Theological  Seminary,  Louisville,  Ky. 

Paganism  Surviving  in   Christianity.— By  Abram 
Herbert  Lewis,  D.D.,  author  of  "Biblical  Teach- 
ings Concerning  the  Sabbath  and  the  Sunday,"  etc. 
etc.     Gilt  top,  i2mo,  $1.75. 
"  The  book  is  full  of  the  enlightenment  which  an  earnest  student 
can  throw  upon  a  great  religious  and  moral  question.     It  is  not  sec- 
tarian or  polemical.     No  one  could  call  it  heretical,  for  it  shows  how 
papanism  was  transmitted  among  the  followers  of  Christ,  and  how 
tardily  it  has  been  fading  away  under  the  benign  influence  of  Chris- 
tian civilization." — Phila.  Eve.  Btilletm. 


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